New Poetry by Michele Seminara

Embody

This body is not a temple but a vehicle 

for pleasure and pain.

This body is not a vehicle but 

a manifestation of pleasure and pain. 

Pleasure and pain are both sacred 

and profane revelations of body.

My body swimming in water is a mere drop in a body of water.

The body of water sometimes appears as a wave.

Wave and drop are only briefly appeared

by mind’s slippery karmic confluence. 

When I swim with you in this precious body of seawater,

we co-create. Later, when sense perceptions urge 

and attachments merge, we procreate.

Roused energies rise in steamy flesh 

and ahh into the other’s supple body.

Sometimes the ahh dives down like a fish and quickens into being. 

Three babies have anchored in my maternal cove:

nascent body/minds blooming in mine 

as I float like a yoke on the surface of 

this shimmering ocean’s grand dream. 

- © Michele Seminara 2021

Michele is a Sydney poet and mother of three and chief editor of literary mag Verity La.