WE THINK WITH OUR MIND and act with our body, but perhaps our body thinks just as well. It thinks through movement, through the senses in the skin that are killed and reborn through exploration of the world. The body thinks through touch, but where does the body and the mind touch?

writes poet Thom Donovan.

Where does this convergence occur, where the body and mind dance in harmony and create something perceived through an action in reality? Do they dance in understanding, or do they challenge one another; contention in a trial of will?

Does the body move through the world, or does the mind; does the mind think, or the body? Donavan writes of somatic poetry as:

Within somatic poetry, the body becomes seen in the reader’s realm of perception; they garner a perspective from the words on the page. What does it mean for a body to be seen? If the body is seen, the human spirit is felt, in the shape of spoken words, conferred emotion and feeling through an attempt at illustrating truth.

No matter what we say, we convey our truth — a lie is just as telling as a truth, not by what it literally says, but by its meaning. The body, too, conveys this underlying truth; the words on the page pulse with the truth, our truth. Each word digs to find a deeper meaning. The body becomes seen through language.

Physically, we live in our body; we inhabit this home of bones and flesh and moving blood. We know of its secrets and we’ve seen what it can do; we’ve experienced it rise and fall, where in our mind we thought we couldn’t carry on. But the show didn’t stop, the sky didn’t fall.

We wish our home was different; our perception is flawed, unaware of what the body could be.

writes Donovan. Weaknesses turned into strengths, the test of time to harden or to wither, but if the body thinks, a hardened thought might be to let go when it’s time. We just don’t know what we could be. We don’t know what we are.

The force of gravity tests the body every moment of the day. We push against this ceaseless force, and strengthen as we get back up. Our mind strengthens as it challenges this force, that which can never be taken or confined. Does the body harden to adapt, or does it harden to deflect?

Is the adaptable mind supple or rigid, steadfast, or like silk? It’s not who speaks the loudest, but who has something worth hearing. The relation of the mind and body is one in constant movement, an influx of information from the world that contacts the physical; a world moves through as images, ideas — people and their energy fill the well within our being.

The mind and body converge and collaborate, and what’s imparted is our essence. Our elemental self, stripped of all else, but that which makes us who we are. Continually adapting, changing, thinking — begging for a chance to exist in its purest state, where worry and weight and all that which adds to the force of gravity dissipate; where being exists as it should be.

Is that the point of purely being as we are? Beings of light, meant to think with our bodies, and move with our minds.