Gary Snyder – March 15, 2022 Iyengar Level II
For the early birds.
Here
In the dark
(The new moon long set)
A soft grumble in the breeze
Is the sound of a jet so high
It's already long gone by
Some planet
Rising From the east shines
Through the trees
It's been years since I thought,
Why are we here?
Gary Snyder – March 14, 2022 Iyengar All Levels
From a rugged Zen Buddhist Mountain Man. Birdsong is one of the ways I tell time in the morning, in addition to changing light. If the light still feels screwed up to you, try the birds. Happy Pi day.
How to Know Birds
The place you're in
The time of year
How they move and where in the meadows, brush, forest,
rocks, reeds, are they hanging out
alone or in a group or little groups?
Size, speed, sorts of flight
Quirks. Tail flicks, wing-shakes, bobbing —
Can you see what they're eating?
Calls and songs?
Finally, if you get a chance, can you see their colors,
details of plumage — lines, dots, bars
That will tell you the details you need to come up with a name
but
You already know this bird.
Patti Smith – March 13, 2022 Fun with Chairs
In case Daylight Savings screwed up your sleep, and you are lying awake in the middle of the night, thinking about this piece might make you feel better about lying awake in the middle of the night.
AS THE NIGHT GOES BY
…
Let's go
Under the stars
That are beating
Under the moonlight
Stars shoot
Dusk just a whisper
Make this night
Last forever
Oh how I wonder
Where the night goes
Oh let's wonder
Where the night goes
As the night goes
By bye
By bye
Patti Smith – March 11, 2022 Iyengar Level III
Because not everyone appreciates Randy Travis and Alan Jackson. And because I hope this is still true…
PEOPLE HAVE THE POWER
I was dreaming in my dreaming
Of an aspect bright and fair
And my sleeping it was broken
But my dream it lingered near
In the form of shining valleys
Where the pure air recognized
And my senses newly opened
But I awakened to the cry
That the people have the power
To redeem the work of fools
From the meek the graces shower
It's decreed the people rule
The people have the power
The people have the power
…
Randy Travis and Alan Jackson – March 8th, 2022, Iyengar Level II & I
Is it country music or cowboy poetry? Or both? If it makes a difference, I found it in a poetry collection about the American West.
A BETTER CLASS OF LOSERS
I'm gettin' out of this high-rise penthouse suite,
Where we pretend life's rosy and sweet.
I'm gain' back to the folks that I used to know,
Where everyone is what they seem to be.
But these high-class friends that you like to hang around,
When they look my way, they're always lookin' down,
And I'm tired of spendin' every dime that I make
To finance this way of life I've learned to hate.
I'm goin' back to a better class of losers;
This up-town livin's really got me down.
I need friends who don't pay their bills on home
computers
And who buy their coffee beans already ground.
You think it's disgraceful that they drink three-dollar
wine,
But a better class of losers suits me fine.
You say the grass is greener on the other side,
But from where I stand I can't see grass at all.
And the concrete and the steel won’t change the way
you feel—
It takes more than caviar to have a ball.
You think it’s disgraceful that they drink three-dollar
wine,
But a better class of losers suits me fine.
Dick Barnes – March 7th, Iyengar All Levels
For a short trip through slick-rock country.
GRANITE INTRUSIVE
Where the clean wind scours the rock—
sun like a hammer, ice the other season—
there's the life, said the lichen,
that's the life for me.
I'm so glad we found this place
murmured the moss
before the tourists came.
Root of a palo blanco
in thin bark like white paper
crept down over bare rock
to annex another spoonful of soil
and murder the moss that had made it:
I like a place that's been spoiled
just enough, said the root, snuggling in.
The rock didn’t say anything at all.
Why would it?
Gary Snyder – March 6th, Fun with Chairs
After a trip to Durango, where I saw men in a diner who looked like they bucked hay all their lives.
HAY FOR THE HORSES
He had driven half the night
From far down San Joaquin
Through Mariposa, up the
Dangerous mountain roads,
And pulled in at eight a.m.
With his big truckload of hay
behind the barn.
With winch and ropes and hooks
We stacked the bales up clean r
To splintery redwood rafters
High in the dark, flecks of alfalfa
Whirling through shingle-cracks of light,
Itch of hay dust in the
sweaty shirt and shoes.
At lunchtime under Black oak
Out in the hot corral,
—The old mare nosing lunch pails,
Grasshoppers crackling in the weeds—
"I'm sixty-eight," he said,
“I first bucked hay when I was seventeen
I thought, that day I started,
Insure would hate to do this all my life
And I dammit, that's just
what I’ve gone and done."
William Shakespeare – March 4th, Iyengar III
Something pretty for my birthday.
The Sonnets #1
From fairest creatures we desire increase,
That thereby beauty's rose might never die,
But as the riper should by time decease,
His tender heir might bear his memory;
But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes,
Feed’st thy light's flame with self-substantial fuel,
Making a famine where abundance lies,
Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel.
Thou that art now the world's fresh ornament
And only herald to the gaudy spring,
Within thine own bud buriest thy content
And, tender churl, mak'st waste in niggarding.
Pity the world, or else this glutton be,
To eat the world's due, by the grave and thee.
Stevie Smith – March 3rd, Iyengar II & I
On the lighter side, sort of…
Is it Wise?
Is it wise
To hug misery
To make a song of Melancholy
To weave a garland of sighs
To abandon hope wholly?
No, it is not wise.
Is it wise
To love Mortality
To make a song of Corruptibility A chain of linked lies
To bind Mutability?
No, it is not wise.
Is it wise
To endure
To call up Old Fury
And Pain for a martyr's dowry
When Death's a prize
Easy to carry?
No, it is not wise.
W.G. Sebald – Mar 1, Iyengar II & I
In response to the “train” poem I read last week, by St. Vincent Millay. I nice alternate way of thinking.
For how hard it is
to understand the landscape
as you pass in a train
from here to there
and mutely it
watches you vanish.
W.G. Sebald – Feb 28, Iyengar All Levels
Aren’t we all looking for some kind of change/transformation through Yoga? Maybe it’s our hamstrings, or our habits, or way of interacting in the world, or with ourselves. A “fancy” pose like Supta Padangusthasana IV is a nice metaphor for transformation.
Memo
Build fire and read
the future in smoke
Carry out ash and
scatter over head
Be sure
not to look back
Attempt
the art of metamorphosis…
W.G. Sebald – Feb 27, Fun with Chairs
For a disturbing couple of days in the world (Russia and the Ukaraine). Sebald never sugar-coats things. German-born at the end of WWII, he wouldn’t. And still he invokes hope.
Day's Residue
Dialectically thrashed out campaigns
and drafts from days
pending wasted battles
Like every evening
the set task is left
undone in the sandpit
Heeding a dubious silence
I sleep at night
with my ear to the ground
Its distant sounds
spell out
the lessons of a lighter world
Edna St. Vincent Millay – Feb 25, Iyengar Level III
Found this while browsing for something else; the beauty of wandering through a library or even a single book. I was “waylaid by Beauty”. The internet, while useful, is not the same.
Assault
I had forgotten how the frogs must sound
After a year of silence, else I think
I should not so have ventured forth alone
At dusk upon this unfrequented road.
I am waylaid by Beauty.
Who will walk Between me and the crying of the frogs?
Oh, savage Beauty, suffer me to pass,
That am a timid woman, on her way
From one house to another!
Edna St. Vincent Millay – Feb 24, Iyengar Level II & I
If you have itchy feet, that are itichin’ to travel, this is for you. Inspired by Gary Capshaw who’s new home in Oklahoma City is near a railroad track. Such a beautiful sound, trains.
Travel
The railroad track is miles away,
And the day is loud with voices speaking,
Yet there isn t a train goes by all day
But I hear its whistle shrieking.
All night there isn't a train goes by,
Though the night is still for sleep and dreaming,
But I see its cinders red on the sky,
And hear its engine steaming.
My heart is warm with the friends I make,
And better friends I? I’ll not be knowing;
Yet there isn't a train I wouldn’t take,
No matter where it's going.
Kay Ryan – Feb 22, Iyengar Level II & I
It might feel daunting, starting over, as we move back into the world. Eventually it might feel stable, this strange time.
ODD BLOCKS
Every Swiss-village
calendar instructs
as to how stone
gathers the landscape
around it, how
glacier-scattered
thousand-ton
monuments to
randomness become
fixed points in
finding home.
Order is always
starting over.
And why not
also in the self,
the odd blocks,
all lost and left,
become first facts
toward which later
a little town
looks back?
Kay Ryan – Feb 21, Iyengar All Levels
I loved this. What do we lose if we “restore” the world to a Pre-Covid moment?
ALL SHALL BE RESTORED
The grains shall be collected
from the thousand shores
to which they found their way,
and the boulder restored,
and the boulder itself replaced
in the cliff, and likewise
the cliff shall rise
or subside until the plate of earth
is without fissure. Restoration
knows no half-measure. It will
not stop when the treasured and lost
bronze horse remounts the steps.
Even this horse will founder backward
to coin, cannon, and domestic pots,
which themselves shall bubble and drain
back to green veins in stone.
And every word written shall lift off
letter by letter, the backward text
read ever briefer, ever more antic
in its effort to insist that nothing
shall be lost.
Kevin Young – Feb 18th, Iyengar III
In the tradition of the Mirabai, The Song of Songs, Neruda…
SONG OF SMOKE
To watch you walk
cross the room in your black
corduroys is to see
civilization start—
the wish-
whish-whisk
of your strut is flint
striking rock—the spark
of a length of cord
rubbed till
smoke starts—you stir
me like coal
and for days smoulder.
I am no more
a Boy Scout and, besides,
could never
put you out—you
keep me on
all day like an iron, out
of habit—
you threaten, brick-
house, to burn
all this down.You leave me
only a chimney.
Kevin Young – Feb 17th, Iyengar II & I
Earthy love for Valentine’s week!
SWING
You climb the tree
of me—limbs,
knots, your name
carved right
above the heart. And every
year another ring
discovered around my middle
like a moon!
A planet distant. A redwood.
Into my crook you set
yourself a spell
and sing.
Shudder me my thousand
leaves, brushed
by billion winds.
William Shakespeare – Feb 15th, Iyengar Level I
Wouldn’t be Valentine’s week without this voice…
SONNET #76
Why is my verse so barren of new pride?
So far from variation or quick change?
Why, with the time, do I not glance aside
To new-found methods and to compounds strange?
Why write I still all one, ever the same,
And keep invention in a noted weed,
That every word doth almost tell my name,
Showing their birth, and where they did proceed?
0, know, sweet love, I always write of you,
And you and love are still my argument;
So all my best is dressing old words new,
Spending again what is already spent:
For as the sun is daily new and old,
So is my love still telling what is told.