Taking your foot off the brakes

In light of what I wrote about last night, I thought it would be interesting to post this wonderful poem by Marge Piercy.

Beauty I Would Suffer for

Last week a doctor told me
anemic after an operation
to eat: ordered to indulgence
given a papal dispensation to run
amok in Zabar's.
Yet I know that in
two weeks, a month I
will have in my nostrils
not the savor of rendering goosefat,
not the burnt sugar of caramel topping
the Saint-Honore cake, not the pumpernickel
bearing up the sweet butter, the sturgeon
but again the scorched wire,
burnt rubber smell
of willpower, living
with the brakes on.

I want to pass into the boudoirs
of Rubens' women. I want to dance
graceful in my tonnage like Poussin nymphs.
Those melon bellies, those vast ripening thighs,
those featherbeds of forearms, those buttocks
placid and gross as hippopotami:
how I would bend myself
to that standard of beauty, how faithfully
would consume waffles and sausage for breakfast
with croissants on the side, how dutifully
I would eat for supper the blackbean soup
with madeira, followed by the fish course
the meat course, and the Bavarian cream.
Even at intervals during the day I would
suffer an occasional eclair
for the sake of appearance.

I love how she plays with this topic that is often taken WAY too seriously (by folks like me). And I love how she is so sensual in describing food and the historical acceptance of roundness in women's bodies.

But the line that grabbed me and wouldn't let go is this one:

the scorched wire,
burnt rubber smell
of willpower, living
with the brakes on.

Sometimes I feel like I've spent the second half of my life trying to figure out how to take my foot off those damn brakes. That's why I also love the opening lines of a poem by Mary Oliver titled Wild Geese.

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.