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First draft: Crow
Aug. 3rd, 2021 03:55 amCrow
is what I'd like to be doing
about that pose I finally held
for maybe five seconds ten days ago
after seven years of forward rolls and faceplants.
There aren't pics. The wobbling on water
was keeping the rest of the class immersed
in their own business, which indeed
is something I deeply liked about yoga
back when sweating with strangers was merely
weird and gross and healing, rather
than playing roulette with aspirated bullets.
Though even then the mind was always boxing
the shadows of egos and scripts. Even now
I snarl at the teacher who parroted "Push
beyond your limits" every afternoon. She
is a reason I don't go back to that room
for while I don't always own my own mind
my blood and bones and brain all bear
the knowing that there's just this one life
and just this one body. Sometimes it keeps
me tangling and tango-ing with shouldas
all damn night, sometimes into dreams
that are no kind of restful, but often enough
it's saved me from fools and from my own folly:
to ken the stakes is to mind looking feeble
or out of place -- and then to stand firm
on where I am, on where I feel safe
whether it's never putting head to knee
or going back to double-masks inside the store
but also flipping the dog and failing at Warrior 2
again and again and other things too
again but at times with more grace and then
one morning the balance is there,
the world askew and never not too much
and when I tried again last night
who would have believed it had happened at all
watching me almost roll into the furniture
and this is when I thank the stars
for this body that knows what is true
no matter who might be minding it
and for what this body will return to.
(Different pose, different session. Photo by Sara Bradley at Nashville Paddle)
is what I'd like to be doing
about that pose I finally held
for maybe five seconds ten days ago
after seven years of forward rolls and faceplants.
There aren't pics. The wobbling on water
was keeping the rest of the class immersed
in their own business, which indeed
is something I deeply liked about yoga
back when sweating with strangers was merely
weird and gross and healing, rather
than playing roulette with aspirated bullets.
Though even then the mind was always boxing
the shadows of egos and scripts. Even now
I snarl at the teacher who parroted "Push
beyond your limits" every afternoon. She
is a reason I don't go back to that room
for while I don't always own my own mind
my blood and bones and brain all bear
the knowing that there's just this one life
and just this one body. Sometimes it keeps
me tangling and tango-ing with shouldas
all damn night, sometimes into dreams
that are no kind of restful, but often enough
it's saved me from fools and from my own folly:
to ken the stakes is to mind looking feeble
or out of place -- and then to stand firm
on where I am, on where I feel safe
whether it's never putting head to knee
or going back to double-masks inside the store
but also flipping the dog and failing at Warrior 2
again and again and other things too
again but at times with more grace and then
one morning the balance is there,
the world askew and never not too much
and when I tried again last night
who would have believed it had happened at all
watching me almost roll into the furniture
and this is when I thank the stars
for this body that knows what is true
no matter who might be minding it
and for what this body will return to.
(Different pose, different session. Photo by Sara Bradley at Nashville Paddle)
