Three Years and Countless Classes Later…

BY BETSY COHN

It can take a long time

To allow

Something to happen, maybe

Longer the more we need it, maybe

Longest it seems for me,

For my breath

Joining body joining spirit,

For my tears of despair,

Or just of unsettled aloneness

(even knowing how I'm loved),

For those tears

To stop

Their free-fall diving

From the platform of my cheeks

Before crashing

To the ground.

I am made

Flat and am not surprised

As it's happened again and again.

 

And then I wake up

Different. It's been so long

Since I've been surprised.

Yoga's becoming my practice

And I feel

Good.

 

In tears of gratitude and grace

I have become

A drop of salty water

That's in an astonishingly

Silky soft slide

Into a still and glassy lake

That gently envelopes me

And even absorbs my ripples,

Making me so glad.

And maybe

In time I will slide as gracefully

Into an ocean

With no fear and no chop,

Not even in sight

Of a distant shore.

 

Betsy Cohn teaches English full-time at Henry Ford Community College, where she lists her rescue dog, Rosie the Rambunctious, as her teaching assistant; Rosie thinks down-dog was invented to make licking faces easier and thinks the point of everything is to laugh. Both Rosie and yoga have been teaching Betsy well.

This blog was written May 8, 2013.