This week I'm reminding myself
to elevate my chin and walk with my head held straight,
attempting to follow the advice of the doctor
who says I have spent too much time
with my face bent over papers and charts
so my C7 vertebra has become a protuberant knob
that sits in the upper back like a radio station
broadcasting on a channel called pain.
They say, "Listen to your body,"
but I have found that pain doesn't
speak in complete sentences
Its grasp of grammar ls weak. Its pronunciation is unclear.
Pain is a sort of information
that arrives like a wave
and stays as a tidal action
surging around your foundation
in an erosive corrosive process
that slowly dissolves your notion
that you are more real than the world.
And pain has its mysteries, I think.
If you can hold out long enough
I suppose pain might eventually teach you
not to complain,
and if you are not killed by the tutorial,
you might come to see pain
as a kind of weather—
like the sun, the wind, and the rain
that fall through everything
and constantly change.
I can imagine a morning some day in the future
when I might wake up
and remove the blue knit hat I sleep in
and then the rest of my clothing
and go outside and stand in the pain
that is falling upward
from somewhere down inside of me.
I will stand there naked
as it flutters and fluctuates in waves
and paints all its colors on my skin
and how it dazzles and shines.
~ Tony Hoagland