Silence

In shavasana,
my body's response to
every pose that I have just held
slowly leaches out of me
into the warm bamboo floor:
the ache in the once-fractured
bone in my foot, the tremor
in my right hip, slowly easing,
the throb of my shoulders
from the seesaw
of downward dog/upward dog/down,
the screech of hamstrings and
hyperextended knees and
inflexible wrists

and behind all these physical howls.
the low cacophony of daily crises -
bills to pay, taxes to finish,
lunchboxes, birthday parties, permission slips,
bedbugs/laundry/dishes/bathtime/
pottytraining/schooladmissions/
midlifeangst/almostburiedgrief
that were encapsulated
in clenched muscle, now
like bubbles at the surface
dissipate as my body softens.

My mind empties.
For some uncountable time,
I am free of the burden
of language.

Perilous Spring

March 28, 2011

I can taste spring in my mouth.
The crocuses bud and blossom
and somehow do not freeze
when the night's chill falls
and frost still forms on
the old fall leaves.
Still, there is sun, and more
of it each day, warm afternoons,
bright skies, fog rising
from snow subliming in shadow.

In this knife's-edge time,
I can taste my future
away beneath my tongue, behind
my teeth, and rising up
into sinus and tear duct.
It sings of fresh paint
and wood floors and turned earth,
a new home full of space and light,
potential realized,
a wide yard with oaks, pines, maple
already rampant with sap, maybe
a fruit tree or two,
and still space for a garden,
neat rows waiting for seedlings,
perhaps a henhouse - fresh eggs -
perhaps a pasture - goat's milk, cheese -
but most of all, oh yes,
mostly the taste of completion,
of having found the house, the school,
the new life we crave in our bones
like thaw, like water, like sleep.

All these tastes
that linger like ghosts in my mouth
terrify me.
I cannot breathe out
for fear they will scatter
like new snow.