So also in addition to being a college professor,
I was also a yoga teacher and I'm a yoga practitioner,
Ashtanga yoga.
And my teacher years ago asked me
to write a poem that in some way dealt with Ashtanga.
And I never have been able to.
But this poem comes close and this is from my friend Jessica
Lynch Reese.
"The Trauma Sutra."
On an altar sloppy with offerings, bouquets of daisies
and baby's breath, chunks of rose
quartz, a puddle of candle votive in its lotus holder,
a blue eyed fly lands before the diecast statue of a dancing god
and wrings its hands in prayer.
The news must not have been good.
Don't pray like that unless you're
trying to fill the hole that just
got punched through your gut.
Nothing fills that hole.
You can make of it with pains tenacious, a stained glass
oculus through which the spirit can be glimpsed sometimes
in the summertime at twilight when the sunlight honeys
sidewise and strikes that boss to red refraction,
or you can keep it open and let the spirit come and go
as it likes.