{"id":3561,"date":"2011-07-26T12:00:26","date_gmt":"2011-07-26T19:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/janaremy.com\/?p=3561"},"modified":"2011-07-26T12:00:26","modified_gmt":"2011-07-26T19:00:26","slug":"sea-legs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.janaremy.com\/pilgrimsteps\/2011\/07\/26\/sea-legs\/","title":{"rendered":"sea-legs"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"reflection\"<\/a>
\nI went to the beach last week to chase the setting sun, but I was wearing my bionic leg so I couldn’t even dip in a toe to the water (for fear of shorting out my circuitry).\u00a0 Such an ache I felt to leave leg and clothes in a heap on the beach and just swim…<\/p>\n

The Mary Oliver poem below, especially the first stanza, reminds me of the day a few years ago when I received the pathology pictures from the hospital where I had my cancer treatments–including the images of my amputated limb.\u00a0 It was tougher than I thought it would be to look at those images, and afterwards I went for a long swim.\u00a0 As I let the water support me I ‘felt’ my leg there with me, for the first time in a long while.\u00a0 It was a powerful moment to reconnect with something that I’d lost and mourned for so many years, my body truly re-membering itself as I moved through the water…<\/p>\n

And this poem also reminds me of how I struggle against gravity, where every step can be a huge effort…and how I long for the ocean–knowing that at sea is where I feel more free and comfortable (and alive) than I ever do on land.<\/p>\n

The Sea<\/strong>
\n by Mary Oliver<\/strong><\/p>\n

Stroke by
\nstroke my
\nbody remembers that life and cries for
\nthe lost parts of itself–<\/p>\n

fins, gills
\nopening like flowers into
\nthe flesh–my legs
\nwant to lock and become
\none muscle, I swear I know
\njust what the blue-gray scales
\nshingling
\nthe rest of me would
\nfeel like!
\nparadise! Sprawled
\nin that motherlap,
\nin that dreamhouse
\nof salt and exercise,
\nwhat a spillage
\nof nostalgia pleads
\nfrom the very bones! how
\nthey long to give up the long trek
\ninland, the brittle
\nbeauty of understanding,
\nand dive,
\nand simply
\nbecome again a flaming body
\nof blind feeling
\nsleeking along
\nin the luminous roughage of the sea’s body,
\nvanished
\nlike victory inside that
\ninsucking genesis, that
\nroaring flamboyance, that
\nperfect
\nbeginning and
\nconclusion of our own.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I went to the beach last week to chase the setting sun, but I was wearing my bionic leg so I couldn’t even dip in a toe to the water (for fear of shorting out my circuitry).\u00a0 Such an ache I felt to leave leg and clothes in a heap on the beach and just […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3563,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,30,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-amputee","category-mary-monday","category-songspoetry"],"yoast_head":"\nsea-legs - PilgrimSteps<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.janaremy.com\/pilgrimsteps\/2011\/07\/26\/sea-legs\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"sea-legs - 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