Robin Chapman

Beginning Again in Banff

Begin in the body
taking in sun, snow, tracks,
the lodegpole trunks

body whose every cell
speaks to its neighbors,
the roaming bands

of T-cells, lymphocytes,
peptides, transmitters,
fired off by sight of sky,

each cell’s spool
of protein machinery
wound by local tides

to offer a few words
to be read each hour
in the push and pull

of memory—body-mind
looking back through
its slosh of history—

begin in the body,
eye and touch,
nerve and gut,

listening
to itself lighting up
in the clouds’ alpine glow.

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