For sanity and staying inside my body

Fall 2013.

I went to a secondhand store
today looking for a pair of
jeans. The rules
for staying sane are gentle
and have not changed:

When the body grows
(smaller or larger),
keep feeding it what
it wants, keep moving how
it wants, find clothes
that in all ways feel good;
keep knowing
what knowledge (pounds,
calories, and the like)
is not valuable to you.

The project of the past few
years is listening instead
to the wordless shifting
constellations
that pass beneath and across
my skin. To the wise
if sometimes frightening
wants and body-thoughts,
the certainties and
contentments of this animal self,
as well as to the spaces where
I can hear
nothing yet, where long-learned silence
(quiet, quiet)
is not yet unlearned

For dogma,
I will have
only this, that
nothing the body does
or doesn't
do is wrong,
nothing the body
does is wrong,
in my terror and longing
and unbelief, I am reciting
to myself: how
nothing this body
does is wrong