Why Autumn?
Why mist upon my upturned daybreak face?
Why endless rainy afternoons or bright forever skies?
Why bashful sun?
Why fearless wind
Knocking down fences and moaning through the rafters?
Why frosty walks and wood smoke wafting by?
Why chilly nights huddled beside you?
Why Autumn?
Why…yes!
Around the middle of June, I decided to try doing sit-ups. My daughter (and yoga partner) was already gone for the summer, and I new I needed to do something, something physical, to keep from losing everything she had taught me over the previous nine months.I hadn’t done sit-ups in years, didn’t especially like them, and frankly thought I would fail. But I couldn’t think of what else to do.
I asked my husband if he would partner with me in this new endeavor, and he agreed. I’m sure he was thinking, "Anything to get you moving…", but he simply said, "Sure."
We started with 20 sit-ups each, alternating turns of 10 sit-up sets. To my amazement, I was able to do them with little trouble.
"It must be the yoga," I declared afterward. "I never could do these before my yoga sessions."
I felt so good afterward, not just physically good, but like I was really doing something to take charge of myself. We kept going. Most important for me, we made exercise part of our morning routine. Every morning, after feeding Ari and spending a little time as a trio–even before we eat breakfast–we stretch out on the livingroomm carpet and get busy. Every morning, day after day after day.
And, what do you know, the number of sit-ups has gone up and up–30, 50, 90, and today I reached 100.
i’m not sure where I’ll go from here. Frankly, I never expected to get this far. My weekly yoga sessions have resumed, and combined with my morning exercise I am feeling better than ever.
And I must let you know what Ari thinks of all this.
While he tried his best to get in the very middle of things when we started–taking his position right where he could block our movements–he has resigned himself to our routine. Once we take our places, Ari now settles down on his doggie lounge, and simply waits.
The moral of the story is that you can indeed teach a dog new tricks. I’m proof of that!
*smiling face*
.
Words flutter between us
Friendly and fanciful
Frolic in the moment
Frisky and free
Only to fall
Feet fumble and hands hover
Moving is all they know
The heart stands at the threshold
Bows when silence returns
Gets down on all fours
Searching for every last feather
Every lost letter of meaning
a telephone is not an eara camera is not understanding
feet walking in the forest
seek a straight path
the heart meanders
the heart listens and hears
the heart looks inward
and waits for understanding
On one foot
…brief updates about me and those I care about
*Autumn is moving into my neighborhood. Our 12-foot sunflower has succumbed to the rains and we will be trying to harvest this giant’s sunflower seeds along with those of its smaller brothers.
*I just finished reading a fascinating book about American literary giants in 19th century Concord Massachusetts: America Blooming. So now I will need to read more about Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne and Louisa May alcott.
*And to keep the giant theme going, I am less of one thanks to my continued yoga practice and the addition of morning sit-ups. I’m up to 90 a day, hoping to make it to 100 by the end of the year.
**What’s new with you, my darling readers?
How sweet
To see a thing plainly
To glimpse its nature
And its possibilities
You say
There’s something white on the lawn
Some tiny scrap of paper
And bending to pick it up
You see
Wings open to the air
The white creature flutters near
Then away to the garden
Two days later
Clothed in white
From kippah and prayer shawl
Down to my shoeless feet
I stand in the sanctuaryI
Bend the knee and bow
Lower my body and my being
Before the One
All the way down
Touch my heart to the floor
Feel the earth
its rhythm
Press my thoughts and forehead into timelessness
And rising
Feel my wings opening
To the light
To the sweetness of seeing myself
Plainly
To the possibility
Of drawing near
I remember July mornings
Stepping among pools of shade
And leafy bird song
To find your purple door
A portal
Your kitchen garden
A haven to deer
And other shades of beauty
My words can’t express.
Night is waiting
Unknowing is openness
Potential undiscovered
Masked goodness
Still I tremble
Strain to see
What remains hidden in shadow
Strain to touch
What is beyond grasping
The sun is my playmate
Bids me to explore the world
The moon is a mirror
Beckoning me inward
To explore unmapped worlds
To claim the light of my soul
The sea moving between shores makes sense.
The sea , which transforms itself from a quiet glass of rippling reflections
into a rocketing mountain of foam
And fury, wild with watering eyes.
And I have been taught from every side
Life is a sea carrying me between two shores.
(Humans seem to like parentheses)
Beginnings and endings are tidy,
Tell us Where we have been and where we’re headed.
But just maybe, life has no parentheses.
Maybe Life is one infinite line with a few points that leap and dance.
Maybe an infinite circle, a place of silent
Knowing and bliss and love.
And we all–squid and algae, salmon, starfish and rubber boots–
Flail about frantically, suspended in darkness.
As we frolic and fight and spawn
like fish in the sea,
The sea of silent knowing, bliss and love.
Because we are the ever-shifting sea foam
Floating in the vast blue eternity of God.
Everything has a voice
Even little things
A drop of rain has stories to tell
Its travels to distant places
The people it has kissed and soothed
And the fields it has nourished
We are too busy to hear
And its language is beyond our knowing
Everything has a voice
Even destructive things
An earthquake has tales to tell
Its dance gone wild with longing
Its arrogant surge upward into the spotlight
For all to measure and marvel
We are too busy to hear
And its stories are to familiar
