Variations on a Theme of Spine​

Issue 16

I. 
 
Nights it stiffens
            with something other than the forging of resolve.
As if the vestigial tail, wanting remembering
                 whispers:
do not forget you are an animal
with no more significance
than the trailing ant,
                        one day looped to another.
 
So remember your roots as the stiffness forces you down
where
it’s easier to crawl on all fours--
a more natural state.
Aim too high and pain will punish your reach.
Incompletely evolved as it is
the spine shrieks:
it’s so hard to be upright.
 
II.
 
Sometimes for no reason you discover
it unbends, softens
 
alters from thick, drying stick
to supple branch
 
gradually turning limber
as if green lumber,
 
water-soaked willow branches,
or wood-strips curved to form a canoe,
 
so you bend to pick up your paddle,
step into the boat, and glide through the day.
 
III.
 
Her spine served her well for ninety years.
She put her back into climbing hills,
folding donated clothing, rising each morning
with a question on her lips: how can I help?
 
Yoga, exercise, pills--
she did all anyone could ever do--
but her pages loosened,
slipped to the ground.
 
Bones crumbled like a dry-stone wall.
Once upright, now bowed,
brought low in the end.
No one could ever claim she had no backbone.

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Katherine Edgren has two books of poetry: Keeping Out the Noise, (Kelsay Books) and The Grain Beneath the Gloss, (Finishing Line Press,) plus two chapbooks. Her work has appeared in Coe Review, Birmingham Poetry Review, Light, Hanging Loose Press, Orchards Poetry Journal, The Brussels Review, Third Wednesday, among others. She headed up a department at University Health Service, and served as a Project Manager through the University of Michigan, and as an Ann Arbor City Councilmember. She is a retired social worker and a grandmother of four.

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