Skip to main content

The Half Moon Mutiny

It was after the seventh sun salute
when the flow of plank, cobra, dog
lead me to my half moon pose -
it's a stork like posture,
body forms a T - imagine
one leg presses
a footprint into the purple foam only millimeters
away some hardwood pushing back -
and my standing leg has cooperated
dutifully for the first five breaths; but it knows
it is the moon and the sun at the moment,
and just ahead of the sixth breath,
it mutinies! sends a shot over the bow with a warning quiver -
I've got no mind over matter - no pull to convince it
to just stand firm, and what can I do?
I surrender my half moon - retreat to
the safe harbor of downward facing dog -
I'll make peace for that moment and when it
believes it has rallied the rest of my limbs
to go home, I'm quick with a bribe
ginger cookies and mint tea
if we can only get six more breaths
of half moon once again.

Comments

blue aisling said…
'Surrender the halfmoon' - that's a wonderful metaphor!!
November 7, 2007 at 10:17 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Death Might Be Just A Holy Rend

  Death Might Be Just A Holy Rend And life a faithful pillow - a pillow to go flat, a spirit to drift off,  glaciers to melt and raise the sea. The blueprint is clear - Expect a tiny storm of mercy–  full of crows and bottle flies to debride the corpse,  to tithe the land.      And respect the putrid demise - things that fall apart make space for miracles.   Yet there persists the memory of breath rinsed in lavender and salt air. Then the dreams for blood and semen to revive, to metabolize  every tired, sad gospel into a hatch of octopus. Death confesses everything as she conjures her necrosis, as she feigns redemption, fools us with false devotion. She believes our defiance will set her free.   We must let grief to be the thread and needle to darn the rend, renew the cloth. then we can grasp the nascent green of winter wheat in spring.
Post a Comment
Read more

Covid Journal Entry 14

April 4, 2020 Today’s image – Exploring social cohorts. So, on campus now there is a small village of us living together, the remnants of those in residence this year.   We are an international population: seven from the US, six from Vietnam, five from China,   four from Morocco, one from the DR and two dogs/three cats.   We share four large buildings where we live, take our meals, study and exercise, on a five-acre campus. The rest of the two hundred and sixty or seventy odd community members are sheltering in their homes; some of the teachers and administrators dropping by during the week to work in their offices.   We have had little or no contact with them so far.   Our chef and his crew of two come in by rotation to prepare and serve the daily meals, a maintenance duo tend to the essential tasks and repairs, the city services haul away trash and recycling, the postal service, UPS and FedEx still deliver mail and packages.   It’s Iowa and the gove...
Post a Comment
Read more

Tongue

When I was ten, my dad pot-roasted a cow’s tongue. He brought it to the table on a platter, unsliced, open: a chaise lounge, red and velvet, slip of the lip to swallow us whole. The tongue is a door, a bed of confession, zipper to seal the deal. There is a jade plant on my window sill. Its many tongues sip silent molecules: water vapor, nitrogen, cool pool in the Kalahari. Tongue as cave, as conveyor, as flight of brown bats. Tongue holding space between us, gilded and strong with hope and death - a pocket for everything. Last night a snag of locust blew down over chicken wire. Five hens escaped. The snag, a tongue to freedom, to better pickings, a generous ledge. Sometimes a tongue wags, ungenerous, it keens to ten fingers times twenty dangling over a hand-hewn gunnel. There were children in that boat, fleeing with family over turquoise water. Maybe it was the Mediterranean or cold Aegean Sea - a wide tongue to crac...
Post a Comment
Read more