You Put Your Whole Self In

I was going to start with a protest,
Where are the instructions?
But I have to admit that’s exactly
what the song is. And really,
how can it be too complex
for heart’s knowing to carry out,
when the whole point of the whole thing
called life is to put your whole self in.
I knew how when I shot
squalling out of my mother into the world.
My whole self, of course, what else?
No experience in partial presence,
I entered entire, dancing the hokey
for all my tiny body was worth.
I almost remember, how good it felt.
Air! Adventure! Love! Embodiment!

I’d like to remember better. It’s only
a bare blink of seventy-eight years later.
What the hell kind of trajectory is it,
that looks like growth but takes you
from complete, miraculously extravagant –
to muted, guarded, unfinished?
A bell curve, upside down?
with the ends turning into beginnings?
I want the wisdom of all the limbs in the center.
I want the profligacy
of every self I’ve so far worn, to whirl
in a Dervish circle lovefest of devotion.
When finishing school gets to graduation –
No! Before, before, I want all the selves in,
before the end of this path.
I’m getting the pokey down better every day.

All I have to do is keep on practicing
what isn’t trite or contrived at all,
the glorious Hokey of the quantum cosmos.
Who can understand it? Maybe
our descendants with 12 strands of helix
finally unfurled, and maybe
a circle is the only shape that tells the truth
of returning to completion.
Maybe putting a self in
and taking it out again
to try a different limb’s avenue,
is the grand experimentation of life.
And ah, maybe
turning yourself around
is the way back, the way home
to air, adventure, love, embodiment.

            ©Susa Silvermarie 2025