breath

Tonight I tried yoga for the first time.

Afterwards, I floated out into the zero-degree night, amazed at how much there is to yoga; how clumsy and awkward I was a it, yet how enlarging and organic it could be. All the while without the typical tension tightening my neck and shoulders and back when the weather nears freezing.

At home I sat again and practised awareness and breathing. Inflated with fresh energy; expelling waste. Slowly I felt the seasonal connection and it made sense for the first time: spring is the inhalation; summer the height of expansion; autumn is the deflation and winter the absence of breath. Without the winter, death lingers. Winter creates the vacuum inviting spring to rush in.

Today, March 3rd, I feel the inhalation of spring like a crisp shower after a sleepless dream. Birds wake me in the golden morning like a cliched cartoon. Cleansed of yesterday, absence has reached its panging fullness; breath rushes in.

winter

Winter I

The musky marshmallow sky
Oozes honey
Drizzled over gingerbread houses
with marzipan trimmings
All this sprinkled with icing sugar
And I, in my red coat,
The cherry on top


Winter II

Stale stench clings to crumbling relics
Once rotting, now decomposed
Marrow sucked from skeletal trees
Left bereft
Maggots and scorpions have died out
Feasted on the chalky ash of remains
Their carcasses scatter the darkened alleys
Only blind ghosts
Wheezing their way past the hollow stones
Remember a shadow without fog
And wish they could weep for it