Composed of two contrasting sections, Alison Granucci’s “Says the Body and Soul” is both an ethereal and hopeful work and one of rugged desolation. Even the presentation of the sections and their format mirrors the narrative voice of their content, with the soul’s airy words being sparse and fleeting, while the body’s terrestrial language in the second section presents solidity and earthiness. “‘Says the Body and Soul’ is from a sequence of body and soul dialogue poems,” Alison informed The Dewdrop.
Says the Body and Soul
I. Says the Soul
as you watch through glass
the leaf’s shadow
dapple & weave the sun—-you do not doubt the breeze
exists — and so
I am—-and so—-I was and ever
shall be—-the breath—-before the word
is even thought
II. Says the Body
when the wind blows the ground barren
through the day and the night, there shall come an hour
when the last drop dries in the reservoir
leaving me in the world where
only one thing matters: the dry depth of my
useless thoughts
and how to learn to drink
from the emptiness of the thoughts themselves
Note: Section II is a Golden Shovel after Octavio Paz
Alison Granucci
Alison Granucci is a poet, writer, woodland gardener, and naturalist living in the Hudson Valley. In 2005, she founded of Blue Flower Arts, a literary speaker’s agency, the first in this country to represent poets; but it was only when she retired in 2020 that she began writing poetry. She has been published or is forthcoming in EcoTheo Review, Great River Review, Crosswinds Poetry Journal (contest finalist), Subnivean Journal (contest finalist), and an anthology of bird poems: Little by Little, the Bird Builds Its Nest by Paris Morning Publications. Alison has been awarded a 2023 Artist-in-residence at Trail Wood, the homestead of the late naturalist Edwin Way Teale, and she’s a 2022 graduate of the Brooklyn Poets Mentorship Program. She serves as a reader for The Rumpus and is working on a book length manuscript. Instagram: @alisongranucci