Eugene Field – Dec 14, Iyengar II & I

After a long weekend in New York City, stopping in favorite bookstores and museum gift shops. I needed this. I am broke but inspired!

THE BIBLIOMANIAC'S PRAYER

Keep me, I pray, in wisdom's way

That I may truths eternal seek;

I need protecting care to-day, —

My purse is light, my flesh is weak.

So banish from my erring heart

All baleful appetites and hints

Of Satan's fascinating art,

Of first editions, and of prints.

Direct me in some godly walk

Which leads away from bookish strife,

That I with pious deed and talk

May extra-illustrate my life.

Kiki Petrosino – Dec. 7, Iyengar II & I

This is how December always feels. So much to do, must get started…ha!

Ought

We’ll have to hurry if we want to get started.

It s high time to consider beginning at all.

Time, at least, to think about starting

to start. After all, we've only just gotten up

& running, but now? We re almost too late.

We'll have to hurry. If we want to get started

we’ll have to start now. We'll have to work

round the clock, round the clock, round the—

Well. Let’s think about starting, at least. Though

it’s tougher than ever. We can’t even begin

to explain what it’s like. To start with, we know

we should want to hurry. At least, we're starting

to want to. That s almost too tough to say

at the start. Still, we’re sure we'll begin any moment.

It's time to get started we think. Let’s consider

getting up & running. By then, it'll just sort of start

& we’ll have begun. Zut alors! It's a plan & a party!

It's just—we should hurry. If we want to get started

we better begin. But it's tough. Just look at the time.

Hans Børli – Dec. 6, Iyengar All Levels

My Mother’s birthday today. Baking her favorite Christmas cookies and cherishing her memory!

On Eternity's Tablets

Nothing vanishes. Everything

gets indelibly engraved

on eternity's tablets.

If but a bird flies through the sunset,

two people exchange some friendly words

at the postbox one morning, or

a track snows up slowly by the woods,

then will these very little things

be saved in the universal consciousness

as long as the days dawn in the east,

the nights let fall their mercy over Earth.

There is a memory in space,

an all-embracing cosmic memory

that cancels Time

and joins all things

in a single star-white Now.

Rita Dove – Dec. 5, Fun with Chairs

My chair sometimes feels like this, “ the raft I pile my dreams on”. And beware of boxes.

Island

A room in one's head

is for thinking

outside of the box,

though the box is still

there—cosmic cage,

Barnum's biggest, proudest Ring.

My land: a chair, four sticks

with a board laid across:

This is the raft

I pile my dreams on, set out to sea.

Look for me, shore.

Louise Glück – Dec. 3, Iyengar III

For my Brave Sisters! On our second, third, fourth wind?!

SECOND WIND

I think this is my second wind,

my sister said. Very

like the first, but that

ended, I remember. Oh

what a wind that was, so powerful

the leaves fell off the trees.

I don't think so,

I said. Well, they were

on the ground, my sister said. Remember

running around the park in Cedarhurst,

jumping on the piles, destroying them?

You never jumped, my mother said.

You were good girls; you stayed where I put you

Not in our heads,

my sister said. I put

my arms around her. What

a brave sister you are,

I said.

Louise Glück – Dec 2, Iyengar II & I

From our current US Poet Laureate, is this a little dark? Maybe more than a little? But, the end is so important. If you have lost hope, or maybe are just a little blue, go back to where you lost hope and look for it. Do something that brings you joy this weekend, or reminds you of childhood, or is a little silly!

A CHILDREN'S STORY

Tired of rural life, the king and queen

return to the city, all the little princesses

rattling in the back of the car, singing the song of being:

I am, you are, he, she, it is —

But there will be no conjugation in the car, oh no.

Who can speak of the future? Nobody knows anything about the future,

even the planets do not know.

But the princesses will have to live in it.

What a sad day the day has become.

Outside the car, the cows and pastures are drifting away;

they look calm, but calm is not the truth.

Despair is the truth. This is what

mother and father know. All hope is lost.

We must return to where it was lost

if we want to find it again.

Rita Dove – Nov 30, Iyengar Level II & I

Kind of how I am feeling as yet another Covid variant looms. Maybe we are all just “building a playlist for the apocalypse”?

Shakespeare Doesn’t Care

…

Shakespeare's taking no prisoners:

he's purloined the latest gossip

to plump up his next comedy,

pens a sonnet while building

a playlist for the apocalypse.

When you gripe at reviews, he snickers:

How would you like

to be called an "upstart crow”

just because you dared write a play

instead of more "sugared sonnets"?

How's them apples next to your shriveled

sour grapes? As for the world going to hell (alas! alack! whatever),

ditch the dramatics: He's already done

a number on that handbasket.

what with pox and the plague

bubbling up here and there,

now and then—afflictions

one could not cough away nor soothe

with piecemeal science. So chew it up

or spit it out, he might say,

although more likely he'd just shrug.

What does he care

if we all die tomorrow?

He lives in his words. You wrestle,

enraptured, with yours.

What time does with them

next, or ever after,

is someone else's rodeo.

Alfred Lichtenstein – Nov 29, Iyengar All Levels

More post-holiday nostalgia.

RETURN OF THE VILLAGE LAD

When I was young the world was a little pond

Grandmother and red roof, the lowing

Of oxen and a bush made up of trees.

And all around was the great green meadow.

Lovely it was, this dreaming-into-the-distance,

This being nothing at all but air and wind

And bird-call and fairy-tale book.

Far off the fabulous iron serpent whistled—

Christian Morgenstern – Nov 28, Fun with Chairs

Holidays often return me to my childhood. I vividly remember being fascinated by the wax candles dripping endlessly in their Chianti bottle holders at funky little Italian restaurant on Canyon Road called the Three Cities of Spain. I was five and thought the wax was magical.

THE DREAMER

Palmström sets a bunch of candles

on the table by his bedside

and observes them slowly melting.

Wondrously they fashion mountains

out of downward-dripping lava,

fashion tongues, and toads, and tassels.

Swaying o'er the guttering candles

stand the wicks with flames aspiring,

each one like a golden cypress.

On the pearly fairy boulders

soon the dreamer's eyes see hosts

of dauntless pilgrims of the sun.

N. Scott Momaday – Nov 26, Thanksgiving Recovery All Levels

Yes! Prayer I can get behind.

May my heart hold the earth all the days of my life. And when I am gone to the farther camps, may my name sound on the green hills, and may the cedar smoke that I have breathed drift on the canyon walls and among the branches of living trees. May birds of many colors encircle the soil where my steps have been placed, and may the deer, the lion, and the bear of the mountains be touched by the blessings that have touched me. May I chant the praises of the wild land, and may my spirit range on the wind forever.

Mark Nepo – Nov 26, Thanksgiving Recovery All Levels

A good day to focus on that internal Mystery.

IN

The Mystery needs

authentic souls to bear

witness to it, the way

matter needs atoms to

hold it together, the way

blood needs cells to keep

it alive. So I no longer ask

why but how. Not the

mechanical how. But how

to stand on nothing like

an atom in the center

that is everywhere.

Simon Ortiz – Nov 25, Thanksgiving Gratitude All Levels

Happy Thanksgiving - this piece says it all.

The Dreamer's Song

Yes, the morning sun.

Yes, the land all around.

Yes, the people with us.

Yes, the dreaming dream.

With song, the blood runs strong.

With song, the eyes see clear.

With song, the heart is full.

With song, the spirit does dream.

For we cannot be denied.

For we will not be held down.

For we shall not turn away.

For we must not quiet the dream.

The dream is the sun and the people.

The dream is the song and the spirit.

The dream is always "we are everyone.”

The dream is always the dreamer.

Mary Oliver – Nov 23, Iyengar Level I

We just need to keep remembering what we can do. Happy Thanksgiving

WHAT I CAN DO

The television has two instruments that control it.

I get confused.

The washer asks me, do you want regular or delicate?

Honestly, I just want clean.

Everything is like that.

I won't even mention cell phones.

I can turn on the light of the lamp beside my chair

where a book is waiting, but that's about it.

Oh yes, and I can strike a match and make fire.

Mary Oliver – Nov 23, Iyengar Level II

For those who know Rumi well enough to understand. Who know Yoga well enough to understand. Hopeful.

RUMI (for Coleman Barks)

When Rumi went into the tavern

I followed.

I heard a lot of crazy talk

and a lot of wise talk.

But the roses wouldn't grow in my hair.

When Rumi left the tavern

I followed.

I don't mean just to peek at

such a famous fellow.

Indeed he was rather ridiculous with his

long beard and his dusty feet.

But I heard less of the crazy talk and

a lot more of the wise talk and I was

hopeful enough to keep listening

until the day I found myself

transformed into an entire garden

of roses.

Mary Oliver – Nov 22, Iyengar All Levels

For a piece of lotus pose. We all start somewhere. And then we start again, and again, and again, and…Given the frequency Oliver is read in Yoga classes, fun to read she actually took some herself.

FIRST YOGA LESSON

“Be a lotus in the pond," she said, "opening

slowly, no single energy tugging

against another but peacefully,

all together.”

I couldn't even touch my toes.

"Feel your quadriceps stretching?" she asked.

Well, something was certainly stretching.

Standing impressively upright, she

raised one leg and placed it against

the other, then lifted her arms and

shook her hands like leaves. "Be a tree," she said.

I lay on the floor, exhausted.

But to be a lotus in the pond

opening slowly, and very slowly rising—

that I could do.

Alice Oswald – Nov 21, Fun with Chairs

After several days of Full Moon fever, I kind of felt like this…

Full Moon

What did I dream last night?

I dreamt I was the moon.

I woke and found myself still asleep.

It was like this: my face misted up from inside

And I came and went at will through a little peephole.

I had no voice, no mouth, nothing to express my trouble,

except my shadows leaning downhill, not quite parallel.

Something needs to be said to describe my moonlight.

Almost frost but softer, almost ash but wholer.

Made almost of water, which has strictly speaking

No feature, but a kind of counter-light, call it insight.

Like in woods, when they jostle their hooded shapes,

Their heads congealed together, having murdered each other,

There are moon-beings, sound-beings, such as deer and half-deer

Passing through there, whose eyes can pierce through things.

I was like that: visible invisible visible invisible.

There's no material as variable as moonlight.

I was climbing, clinging to the underneath of my bones, thinking:

Good God! Who have I been last night?

Tlingit – Nov 19, Iyengar III

After the spectacular Blood Moon/ Beaver Moon eclipse last night. The Tlingit calendar.

1. goose month 2. black bear month 3. silver salmon month 4 month before everything hatches 5. month everything hatches 6. time of the long days 7. month when the geese can't fly 8 . month when all kinds of animal prepare their dens 9. moon child 10. big moon / formation of ice 11. month when all creatures go into their dens / the sun disappears 12. ground hog mother's moon

Ogden Nash – Nov 18, Iyengar II & I

Picked up Nash, a longtime New Yorker stalwart, after seeing Wes Anderson’s Paris Dispatch. For all my Type-A practitioners, take time to do nothing…harder than it sounds for some of us.

A STITCH TOO LATE IS MY FATE

There are some people of whom I would certainly like to be one,

Who are the people who get things done.

They balance their checkbooks every month and their figures always agree with the bank’s,

And they are prompt in writing letters of condolence or thanks.

They never leave anything to chance,

But always make reservations in advance.

When they get out of bed they never neglect to don slippers so they never pick up athlete's foot or a cold or a splinter,

And they hang their clothes up on hangers every night and put their winter clothes away every summer and their summer clothes away every winter.

Before spending any money they insist on getting an estimate or a sample,

And if they lose anything from a shoelace to a diamond ring it is covered by insurance more than ample.

They have budgets and what is more they live inside of them,

Even though it means eating things made by recipes clipped from the Sunday paper that you'd think they would have died of them.

They serve on committees

And improve their cities.

They are modern knight errants

Who remember their godchildren's birthdays and the anniversaries of their godchildren's parents,

And in cold weather they remember the birds and supply them with sunflower seed and suet,

And whatever they decide to do, whether it's to save twenty-five percent of their salary or learn Italian or write a musical comedy or touch their

toes a hundred times every morning before breakfast, why they go ahead and do it.

People who get things done lead contented lives, or at least I guess so,

And I certainly wish that either I were more like them or they were less so.

Emerson Blackhorse Mitchell – Nov 16th, Iyengar II & I

Diné from Shiprock. Backbends might feel like a hill (or mountain) to climb, and they can be. Don’t forget to admire the view, maybe take a look at that next hill, maybe not…

MIRACLE HILL

I stand upon my miracle hill,

Wondering of the yonder distance,

Thinking, When will I reach there?

I stand upon my miracle hill.

The wind whispers in my ear.

I hear the songs of old ones.

I stand upon my miracle hill;

My loneliness I wrap around me.

It is my striped blanket.

I stand upon my miracle hill

And send out touching wishes

To the world beyond hand’s reach.

I stand upon my miracle hill.

The bluebird that flies above

Leads me to my friend, the white man.

I come again to my miracle hill.

At last I know all of me—

Out there, beyond, and here upon my hill.

Jim Northrup – Nov 14th, Fun with Chairs

From an Anishinaabe poet, I love this piece. Reminds me of the chair I use for Yoga. 20 years old, paint splattered and on it’s 3rd life at least!

REZ CAR

It s 24 years old,

It s been used a lot more than most.

It s louder than a 747.

It’s multicolored and none

of the tires are brothers.

I’m the 7th or 8th owner

I know I'll be the last,

What’s wrong with it?

Well, the other day

the steering wheel fell off.

The radio doesn't work

but the heater does,

The seats have seen more

asses than a proctologist.

I turn the key, it starts,

I push the brake, it stops,

What else is a car

supposed to do?