Scott Davidson—Body and Brain

There is only this you need to believe. We are smaller

and greater than our bodies. We are not above them.

They cover us and we in turn surround them.

Sometimes when we shrink inside, unable to make our

appendages work, we are children wearing our father’s shirts.

We're not born knowing how to re-inflate once our selves

have been diminished. To shrink inside for good, to lose

completely the ability to engage, is to fall from the mercy

of our own grace. When body and brain consider the spirit

at fault, trust is a natural concern. Beyond even big

mistakes, it’s more serious not to be there at all. Moving

forward, possibly compensating for lack of resolve, what are

our options, within the rules, for digging in, not allowing

our basic selves to be pulled along like empty sleeves?

We're not born knowing. We learn if it’s clear what to do.

Scott Davidson

Scott Davidson grew up in Montana, worked for the Montana Arts Council as a Poet in the Schools and – after most of two decades in Seattle – lives with his wife in Missoula. He’s been nominated for a Pushcart Prize in poetry and the GE Young Writers Award for literary essay. His poems have appeared in Southwest Review, Hotel Amerika, Poets, Painters, Composers, Terrain. org, Bright Bones: Contemporary Montana Writing, and the Permanent Press anthology Crossing the River: Poets of the Western United States.