CD-B DIRECTORY

I have enormous pleasure in presenting as my first offering in this section of the website, a poem by Carolyn Zonailo. In her poem she offers a variation on the theme of this website; about  connections to our bodies and minds. I look at the connections between us and the cosmos and Carolyn ponders the connections between each of us. This poem is included in Carolyn Zonailo's recently published (2006) book of poetry titled "The Moon with Mars in Her Arms", ISBN 1-894800-82-6, published by Ekstasis Editions, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. It is a book of memorable poems you will take with you wherever you go.

 MY BODY IS A MACHINE ©

• My body is a machine

• but there is no warranty,

• few spare parts

• and no guaranteed life span.

• "Why do they call it

• the golden years?"

• I overhear one elderly woman

• say to another; and then,

• "The body is a machine,

• the doctor diagnosed ageing."

• The physiotherapist tells me

• athletes fine-tune their bodies,

• getting more performance

• by pushing beyond pain

• and limits of normal endurance.

•  

• I am endeavouring

• to live with and in my body,

• trying to make peace

• with how my body

• changes from this to that

• without warning.

• Entering the donut

• of the MRI machine

• I hear a strange music,

• the metallic clink

• as a magnetic field

• images my vertebrae.

•  

• Am I the eye inside

• these five senses: seeing,

• tasting, smelling- -

• or the I that drives

• the machine?

• Am I a consciousness,

• a brain sitting on top

• of the corporeal me?

• I have wanted to give up

• this poem, as it becomes

• one unbroken, unanswered

• question mark,

• slipping from the page

• and from my mind

• but when I turned on the TV

• there it was again,

• one character saying to another

• "your body is just a machine"

• so that everywhere I hear

• this phrase as if it were

• a known and accepted fact- -

• no philosophical debate,

• further speculation,

• or religious doctrine necessary- -

• just mechanical principles

• and Darwinian theory.

•  

• A cousin received a transplanted

• heart; he made it through

• the months of trauma and sickness

• so that now the new heart

• beats within his chest.

• His wife of over thirty years

• says her mild-mannered husband

• is different: he bangs his hand

• upon the table beside the dinner plate- -

• aggressive, angry, demanding- -

• not like the man she has loved;

• she says they never argued

• during all their married years.

• "Cellular memory" author of

• The Heart's Code calls it,

• challenging our idea

• that the heart is just

• a marvelous mechanical pump

• and not an organ of memory and soul.

• Imagine: someone's else's self

• could accompany the transplant

• heart, a personality ingrained

• upon the organ, what the author

• calls "soul stuff" imprinted

• in the mechanical body.

•  

• Piecing together the fragments

• of this poem, I return to its

• beginning, a circle of question,

• inked pages falling away,

• thoughts suspended into sleep,

• the phrase running beside me

• as I hum along inside my body.

Carolyn Zonailo was born in 1947, in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. While growing up, she traveled extensively in the interior and coastal regions of that province. She studied at the University of Rochester, New York and received her M.A. in literature from Simon Fraser University. She is the author of nine books of poetry, several chapbooks and a book of prose-poems. She is currently working on a new book of poems, and a collection of stories entitled "The Land of Motionless Childhood".

Her ninth book of poetry, The Goddess in the Garden was published August 2002, by Ekstasis Editions, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. Visit her literary website: www.carolynzonailo.com

Carolyn Zonailo has served on national councils for The League of Canadian Poets and The Writers' Union of Canada. She moved to Montreal, Quebec, Canada in 1991 where she resides with her husband, poet Stephen Morrissey.