Colleen Harris

MERCIES OF THE BODY

The mercies of the body are few
but precious: sleep is a closed,
slender hand riding the rocking

bow across viola strings during
Tchaikovsky’s Adagio lamentoso,
the sight and sound of bees tending

gardens just outside the window
are the touch of a hand without
harmful intent descending past

crown to temple, over gentle pier
of cheekbone to cup downy curve
of jaw and offer silent solace.

The press of weighted blanket ironing
flesh to bone is a mother’s embrace
nothing sought or given, just creating

space to exhale breath as a murmuration
of starlings in flight, shaped but free
to wheel in every direction, within

touching distance, never touching,
falling and lifting like a dandelion
wish sent skyward in the late June

wind. Soon, too soon, the clock
winds down, and it is also a mercy
when the meat releases soul, and spirit

can look down and love the shell
because it gave us the shape we were
known by, a way to reach out

and hold everything we loved close
if we were brave enough to lever
the muscles in our arms and mouths.

COLLEEN HARRIS (she/her) earned her MFA in Writing from Spalding University. A three-time Pushcart Prize nominee, her poetry collections include The Light Becomes Us (forthcoming 2025), Babylon Songs (forthcoming 2026), These Terrible Sacraments (2010, 2019), The Kentucky Vein (2011), God in My Throat: The Lilith Poems (2009), and chapbooks Toothache in the Bone (forthcoming 2025), That Reckless Sound (2014), and Some Assembly Required (2014).