Holiday
By Kelly Dalton

When the heart stopped counting,
The body dropped, mouth open,
Hands flung up
In exaggerated astonishment
At being so suddenly uninhabited.
 

It seemed unfair.
I wanted the body to have a holiday
Without the bossy soul.
A few last hours as it cooled
To do the things that made the body pleased.
 

I wanted it, freed, to strut out to the street
And meet the other recent dead.
I would watch them as they did whatever made them
Flush and gleam teeth.
Couples dancing, the athletes bounding,
Some just sunbasking.
I think my father’s body would swing at a golf ball again and again,
The balls skying straight over the road’s dotted line,
The body joyous in master of the difficult.
 

Or perhaps it would join the wiggly heap in cheerful perversity midstreet,
Sinless because soulless, happy and innocent as weasels rubbing together,
All the shouldn’ts sloughed off like a sunburn.
 

Who knows. Who really knows anybody
Or anybody’s body.
 

I am watching them out the window:
A few feet from the sunny smiling orgy,
A woman’s body is bouncing a tiny ball,
And ferociously playing jacks.

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