Prescience

"My spirit moves to tell of shapes transformed..." 
                                                              Ovid, Metamorphosis


The body knows before you do.
The body rouses in the early hours 
to empty what it can no longer 
accommodate. How long did it believe 
—not in its invincibility, but in the dream 
of absolution? Now the summer winds
itself around a spool. Now the long 
rains come, and the body knows
how shadows pool like grief 
in the throats of anemones, press
down the length of reeds. The body
fears how much it feels, even as light
shapes a film like armor around 
each object in the world