Questioning the Body

by Tracy Koretsky

When she told me that Feldenkries was something like
the torah, questions answered by questions
except that they are asked of your body,
I asked if my body would tell the truth or not.
She said, “It doesn't always know the answers.
You have to give your body to your mind

to see inside with what they call the mind's
eye.”  An architect, I’ve heard it called, something like
a handsome stranger who wittily supplies all the answers,
a fairy godmother with the gift of three questions
instead of wishes and you feel gypped.  This is not
the story.  In that story, my body

runs through the long singing grasses, my laughing body
tour jetes against the blue spring sky, and my mind
feels no need to wander inside, not
to probe nor to ponder, more something like
keeping your eye on the ball, your only questions
your teammates eyes, their winks in answer.

Why should you expect more of an answer?
In the end, there is just this: your body
and the same old tired questions.
It might not be a good diversion for the mind,
long strokes on your body, but they are something like
a movie of yourself in your mind, and not

an indy-edgey either. Why not
the feel good movie of the year?  All the answers
tidied by the last big number, something like
tides or long strokes on your body.
(And you remember what you’ve read about “no mind”
but you can’t stop your mind from asking questions.)

For what is your mind for if not for questions?
And what is your body for if not
to be?  Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind
and all that, well, that is part of every answer.
And suffering too, by the way, is the job of the body
who offers itself up something like

a beggar for change, just his presence forcing questions:
Could someday that be you?  Though you’d like to believe not
you have very few if any answers and like him, just one body.