Outskirts online journal

Lucy Dougan

Further information

About the author

Lucy Dougan is a postgraduate in the Department of English at the University of Western Australia. She has published poetry in various journals which include Fremantle Arts Review, Poetrix and Ulitarra. She currently works part-time in the Newcastle Community Arts Centre, NSW.

Publication details

Volume 2, November 1996

Body Poem (a dance)


To feel alive

sacrum deep

coccyx deep

to let the grass

imprint your skin

ingeniously

without care

to lose these words

and every other

to the net

of the heavens

and not to mind

to feel safe

unspeaking

the name of that

which lives inside

to feel the planets

shift in your arms

and the time of your childhood

cast off its shroud and

stretch and settle

in this day

with its warmth

and suns and superabundance

realigning the now

of this place

with then–but

do not dig for that

first curled thing

to be aware of the pact

between the made

and the given

to be unfearful of the given

and not shirk from its

abject clothes and demands

These steps go unrecorded

a dip in the knee

a sweep of self-embrace

and follow loss

as surely and gravely

as a well loosed arrow

 

Outskirts online journal

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Thursday, 15 September, 2011 12:36 PM

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