On Getting Out Of Bed With A Cracked Rib Poem by Keith Shorrocks Johnson

We lie there together my broken body and I
Casting about for an approach to rising:
Right arm splayed out seeking purchase
Legs exploring the bed's edge for the floor.

We are aware that further pain in inevitable
That any heaving up will touch the unbearable.
We wait together, body and mind, fearing movement
Pressed to rise to meet the functions of life.

The best of mind is kindness and poetry and music
Visited by the clouds, kissed by the falling petal,
The songs borne from the glades and snowfields -
But powerless over pain and its jarred disharmony.

Nature is at no pains to conceal her imperative
That beauty and meaning give way to the unendurable
That she in the end will conquer with ice and fire
As we drag ourselves about facing up to indifference.

We will try again my body and I to get out of bed
To simply find our feet through the flinching agony,
To resolve once more into sentience and physicality -
Denying the basic truths of suffering and non-separation.