A Sonnet of the Body

This body, this prehensile part of me,

This thing that I inhabit, flesh and bone,

Conditioning my action, even my own

Most prideful thinking, with its chemistry -

This self that balks me when I would be free,

Sticks in the bog and stumbles over stone,

Eats, cries for sleep, needs loving and makes moan,

Or clutches joy with equal urgency -

This body is I... and yet it is not I.

It governs me, yet like a cloak I wear it,

Till some eventual day I put it by

For garments new. Yet, soul, how can I bear it -

The panther in the net, the bird in lime -

To wait, inviolate, the knife of time?