Self-Exam 
    They tell you it won’t make much sense, at first,
    you will have to learn the terrain. They tell you this
    at thirty, and fifty, and some are late
    beginners, at last lying down and walking
    the old earth of the breasts—the small,
    cobbled, plowed field of one,
    with a listening walking, and then the other—
    fingertip-stepping, divining, north
    to south, east to west, sectioning
    the little fallen hills, sweeping
    for mines. And the matter feels primordial,
    unimaginable—dense,
    cystic, phthistic, each breast like the innards
    of a cell, its contents shifting and changing,
    streambed gravel under walking feet, it
    seems almost unpicturable, not
    immemorial, but nearly un-
    memorizable, but one marches,
    slowly, through grave or fatal danger,
    or no danger, one feels around in the
    two tack-room drawers, ribs and
    knots like leather bridles and plaited
    harnesses and bits and reins,
    one runs one’s hands through the mortal tackle
    in a jumble, in the dark, indoors. Outside—
    night, in which these glossy ones were
    ridden to a froth of starlight, bareback.

                          Sharon Olds