Poems from the 12-Hour Couplets Contest: The Spirit Makes Its Case, Steven Searcy

Steven Searcy is the author of Below the Brightness (Solum Press, 2024). His poems have appeared in Southern Poetry Review, Commonweal, UCity Review, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, and elsewhere. He lives with his wife and four sons in Georgia.

The Spirit Makes Its Case

The body begs with brash insistence

to take the path of least resistance.

The spirit, on its best day, yearns

to go the way that chafes and burns,

to seek the peak with sweeping views,

to sweat and strain, to brave the bruise.

The body pleads for rest and pleasure,

uninterested in hidden treasure.

The spirit looks into the future

when every wound receives a suture,

seeing how much there is to gain

by bearing temporary pain.

The body’s time is transitory—

the spirit says memento mori

and tries to teach the body how

to look beyond the here and now.

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