Precious Rest

Yoga Poetry

Not Rare But Precious

Think of what’s not rare but precious.

~ Ruth Gendler

The gift of light. Of dark.

The squeaky swing set

that’s really a blue jay

searching for love and gravity.

What tells you to lie down.

Why standing back up

each morning is precious

as breath or clouds splintering

into rain dissolving the drought.

The horizontal day that turns

into the vertical night,

the stubble on the path

between the furrows of labor,

hope, and need. Any curve

wheeling toward the horizon,

all the dreams of finding

your house has extra rooms,

the ease of a broken love

suddenly making sense,

the return of a lost locket

from childhood, and in it,

your grandfather’s face.

Waking this afternoon to

thunder, the smell of rain.

Rise up without fear

to the coffee and daylight

skimming the dark.

Rise through the remnants of the dream

where you are lost, all pay phones broken.

Rise toward the piano you haven’t played

for months, and place your hands

on the keys of your memory.

Play badly but loud, and let the ringing

rise through your arms.

Rise into the first slant of light breaking

across the living room floor

to coat the sleeping dog.

Open the door into the cold and run

to the passenger door to lean in

and start the car in your slippers.

Rush back inside and let the next

vessel warm for you as you dress and pause,

breathe into one still drop

of this raining life,

the air heavy enough to hold you.

Almost Gone

The sun calls one last word in its rusting voice,

then leans to the west, sweetening its tune

by forgetting the melody. The taste of light

lingers in the sudden cooling of breath,

the slim branch of a twisted tree over the horizon

where one crow waits for the shadows

the moon will throw over the brome field

two turns of the wheel back in time.

The stand of cedars wakes with a start.

The dry ground loosens its new cracks

and tilts rocks for the snakes to emerge.

The wind moves on, nothing to see here,

while the dark in the dark quiets its old hands.

What’s gone seems like it’s gone for good

no matter how often the song returns,

broken light reddening the opposite horizon

like a heartbreak, the song of the bloodstream,

the journey of stone through ocean to prairie,

every flicker of sound and motion always turning

into something, almost gone, almost here.

Yoga Poetry – Body of Time

What did you expect?, the knee asks.
Just the way of the world, says the elbow.
The wrinkles of the knuckles laugh harder,
and the little toes on both feet turn out
as if escape was possible. This body of time
takes another breath, sends another valentine,
ignores another blast of hatred even as it learns
new tricks: ways to hang upside down in ropes
at the yoga studio, or catch the melting ice cream
before it escapes from cone to sidewalk.

Since it became an I, it revels in being owned,
in being mine and not yours. It bends toward
the drought, and expands when it rains.
It fits itself perfectly in the flannel sheets, in love
with the concentric wind the ceiling fan makes.
It’s a month old, or 11 years, or somewhere past 54,
and while it doesn’t know all the words to that tune,
it’s smart enough to know how it internalizes age
like the sky does for what we call heat lightning.
It’s a borderless land of weather and mood,
a container for what weakness and strength make
out of the too-long car ride, a thunderhead of
supposed needs, a quiet rumble in deep sleep
and something it was desperate to remember.

It’s all the time in the world I have, so says
the swirl of the fingerprint, the indentation
on the left ring finger, the slight rise of a scar line
on the clavicle, the branches of veins on the back
of the wrists, the music of the eyebrows,
the heart’s muscular clutch and release.

Yoga Poetry – What the Sky Is Made Of

The sky is made of soft rain and hard light,

the old yearning to be held, the ancient fear of not

having enough, and the fountain of wind that says,

Something’s gone, something else is arriving.

The sky is made of rocks shattered finer than

the smallest atoms of human memory, air we call breath

once we take it in and turn it to motion, anger, or song.

The beating of hummingbird wings compose the sky,

as well as the fluttering of muscle on muscle, the space

in between the rain, the drum of the jackrabbit’s heart.

The sky is made of rivers before and after they become rivers.

Then It’s Over

The blue breaks through

the setting clouds, an old fire,

while the field lays down

its colors for the night.

Sky tumbles over itself

day to night, tension to calm.

What we think happened,

and what no one but the wind saw–

all lost to the first falling star.

Nothing hurts for a moment.

Those you love shine

whether still here or long gone.

A wide darkness envelopes

the world, takes your hand,

and shows you where to stop

looking and where to start.

White Bridge - John H. Twachtman

The bridge is made of weather. The bridge is made of time.

Translucent, the color of water, it spans the world in sharp relief

to lushness of green, western edge of blue, rain shadow in between.

Five miles north, the cedars drink up the storm while the sky inhales

old starlight, already dead when it lands, for rock and root,

bowed thunderhead and nightfall, velocity and cricket song.

The bridge is a slim path between dusk and longing, a wide swath

from sleep to starlight, an arm of weather linking here and there,

telling us that reality is always round, circling everything back.

The first lilt of lullaby, and beforehand, the roar of the bloodstream,

the steady clip of your mother’s heart above where your own forms,

the tumble and turmoil out, ready or not, to the sharp light of birth.

The bridge arches itself past endings, showing us love is a wheel

that already knows what we learn: nothing is safe in this world

except change, courage, and the willingness to cross over.

Yoga Poetry

You Rise Up to Meet the Falling World

Whatever you lift to the sky, the sky covers:

middle-of-the-night exaggerations dissolve

to slivers of sadness on your pillow,

middle-of-life jolts compress the heavens

into one streak of sleet, thawing into softer ground.

Like the rain cycle that obscures the view,

you can lose your way on old ground or forget

the innate blue light in everything, ready again.

The surface of the tall grass spins in the breeze

it swirls into existence. The present twists down

to meet you each time you catch your foot.

Stars inform daylight or its absence.

We are made to catch the falling world,

just as the earth is shaped perfectly to catch us.

Did you stop now that you found the moon almost full,

floating west across a small clearing between the clouds?

Did you still yourself in the lawn chair on the deck, and give up

waiting for one desire to name itself, or another to dissipate?

Where have you been, the beautiful world asks.

Wind furrows your hair. The moon folds under a cloud

the size of a great lake. The light leaves in increments.

Lightning bugs thread their stories through the cedars,

which hold all seasons, whether witnessed or not.

The deep charcoal of the windy night blows through you.

Then the moon rolls slowly back out, a flashlight looking for you.

Why have you spent yourself ignoring this?

You Rise Up To Meet the Falling World

Whatever you lift to the sky, the sky covers:

middle-of-the-night exaggerations dissolve

to slivers of sadness on your pillow,

middle-of-life jolts that seem to compress

the heavens into one streak of sleet

thaw into softer ground. Like the rain cycle

that hides the light and obscures the view,

you can lose your way on old ground or forget

the innate blue light in everything, ready again.

The surface of the tall grass spins in the breeze

it swirls into existence. The present twists down

to meet you each time you catch your foot.

Stars inform daylight or its absence.

We are made to catch the falling world,

just as the earth is shaped perfectly to catch us.