“Thinking about the soul one bedbound day” by Margarita Papenbrock
Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets’ daily poetry dispatch. Read “Thinking about the soul one bedbound day” by Margarita Papenbrock.
Thinking about the soul one bedbound day
By Margarita Papenbrock
Well, one sister phone-said the soul will fly
this slow body just a bowl, and death
would pour a real me out, winged and able
I’d be surrounded by the loving dead
But long-deceased Hildegard flipped the body
into the winged soul; the soul at death burps
its holy body out. (She might’ve known
having been ill herself and a smart saint)
Mr. Cohen, also deceased, still sings
a god-y voice revealed my body is
what’s really me. Indivisible soul
and body swirl and bide, clipped or not
And those who had no faith in me divined
my body’s in my shiftless head, my soul
unwell. From afar they cried I should rise
already winged, from non-illness to health
And I hover over the binding bed
for an inanimate minute, another inanimate day
(no calls, no books, no songs, no judgers). I drop
back down, too tried. I am sheet-surrounded
spent mattress springs, flat pillows welcoming
bed and body one, a blanketed joining
no body sees. Who knows about a soul
Copyright © Margarita Papenbrock
Previously published in the way out is the way in (LCP Chapbook Series, 2021)
Margarita Papenbrock is a part-time tribunal member and poet residing in Saanich on the traditional territories of the W̱SÁNEĆ and lək̓ʷəŋən peoples. She has lived with ME/CFS since 2000.
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