Monday Night Yoga

Winter’s coming

And it’s been a decade

Of powdered snow deep on sleeping soil

Pink light fills the space around my eyes

and I’m inside an oyster

Pale geese framed in spun sugar buoyed by luminous green

My limbs stretch and harden

The room is filled with sun like amber ale,

The edges softened by bubbles of glinting gold

I soften and drape

I’m back in that dappled cove beneath your chin

Drapes of turpentine, eyes of ash

A knotted bulb I’ve had tucked in my back pocket these years long

I close my eyes against the magenta kaleidoscope 

Ribs expanding, contracting

This life I’ve filled apart from you

The warm yolk slips 

And skies of lavender are muted

By a shadowed cloak 

A single goose shouts into the rising night

The boards beneath my back become yellowing grass, carpets of pine, smooth rocks warmed in the sun

All the places this body lay with you

These trips around the sun shorten and morph

Five million minutes filled with growth and buds

Decay and the shedding of those turning leaves

My tight shut eyes open to an absence of impression

A coolness in this day’s death

Winter’s coming 

And I’m lying on a yoga mat remembering you