Weather of Pain

by Tony Hoagland

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