19 December 2013: Elsewhere

Levitation, after Annie Dillard

उदानजयाअत् जलपण्खकण्टकादिष्वसङ्गोऽत्क्रान्तिश्च
udāna-jayāat jala-paṇkha-kaṇṭakādiṣv-asaṅgo-'tkrāntiśca

Gaining mastery over upward flowing energy severs contact 
with mud, water, thorns and the like; whereupon the yogi levitates.
~The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali  

I was remembering the way,

each night,

you used to carefully brush off

the soles of your feet

before stretching your soft legs

into the bedsheets.

At the time, I thought it a compulsion.

Later I saw it as an act of love

for your precious skin,

protection from those stowaway shards

of the broken world.

Then I saw that as exceptionalism,

and decided to dislike the gesture.

It is well known

that there are three ways

to levitate:

to die,

to trip,

and to love oneself

more than the earth.

I find I am opposed to all three.

It is less well known

that we levitate in embrace—

bodies, mud, thorns, and all—

as tenderness holds back fingers of flame. 

8 December 2013: Vermont

The Spinnery

It may as well be sorcery,

how she moves

from bleating sheep

to fair isle mittens,

through centrifuge and steam,

threshing and winding.

It’s the skeins still

deep with the colors

that floated off at shearing

onto the barn floor—

granite, caramel, rust, cloud—

that call me.

But it’s children we discuss.

I am there to find

the root of the next hat

I will knit for my son,

who loses them weekly.

The cloud that followed me in

was the shape of worry

over the particular shade of purple

his lips will turn

with snow on the air,

whether it is tolerable,

whether it will make him stronger

or do him in.

I have one of those,

she says.

A dreamer.

Jumping trains.

I don’t know where she is

for years at a time.

She makes it a point
to catch my eye:

But, you know, they don’t belong to us anyway.

And I laugh, 

remembering Frida
who loved to laugh,

with the barbaric steel in her spine.

Tragedy, she once said,
is the most ridiculous thing.