Natural Medicine on Ice

Natural Medicine on Ice

 

It’s sleeting and raining and snowing.

Ice blankets the branches,

Turned pavement to treachery

This town is closed.

 

No cars pass this house.

Frozen bird feeders magnetize wildlife;

The scurry and flutter of creatures is all that moves under an icy downpour of sodden pellets.

 

My schedule is frozen and the promise of a day off is both exhilarating and nerve racking.

I’m not good at this.

The stillness reminds me that I’m exhausted and too restless to stay put

With projects I’d sooner leave in a rear view mirror.

 

My dog and I take tentative steps onto a dicey front porch.

I’m four layers deep, finished in an old ski jacket.

Despite the icy hill, we pick our way up the road’s shoulder

And head for the lake.

 

I slide backwards again and again down the slope that cuts to the lake road

And finally find footing in a swath of old leaves on the edge of the woods.

My husband has slipped my phone into a pocket worried that I’ll fall in a world of aloneness.

 

I recall a snowy mountain in my past

Three miles up and the road just a path

I’d climb home in darkness,

Moonlight on the snow

I’m used to the simple company of dogs in wilding times.

 

My husband persists

He reminds me that I have a failing hip

What if I fall?

 

Ha!

I’m shushing down the road like a pretend skater

Running without lifting my feet

That slide without slipping.

The woods are silent and I silently pray for no trespassers other than me.

My co-conspirator pup’s white fur looks buttery next to this snow.

He matches my pace though he’s old and more into smelling the roses these days

So to speak

Like me.

 

Look at us,

I tell him.

Ten days ago you had abdominal surgery

And two nights ago, I could barely stand on two legs

The body is more than matter.

 

Under nature’s spell

Given the right time and place

Incapacity is not a word,

And without a form

No longer exists.

 

Unthawed on commencement

I return with my jacket covered in ice

With all that ailed me released by silence and silvered trees.

I am unfrozen.

 

 

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She Moves In Mysterious Ways. It’s All Right.

Or Is It?

 

This pear is too pretty to eat but there’s an order to things

Fulfill your purpose or rot

So I do the thing that makes sense

To me

Kiss it

Take a picture, say goodbye and thank you

Cut it up and eat it covered with shiny flax seeds and sprinkled sprouted almonds

What would you do for love?

 

I used to kiss my knees every time they rose to greet me in a yoga pose

Just a yoga teacher doing what came naturally and I taught them to do the same

I didn’t second guess myself

Some of you remember that

Would you do that for love?

 

I rode a wild horse through the woods that bolted and charged for the stable

Fearless friends raced to save me but that horse threw me hard as it could

I didn’t move for a long time

They thought I was dead

Bounced and bounced and still

I didn’t bother to get checked out

It made sense to me at the time

In hindsight, to you, it may sound foolish

You may be right

Or not

 

 

I took an untamed path down a ski slope and landed on my shoulder

My arm hung suspiciously behind me and refused to move in any way for many days

I didn’t bother anyone about it

Which made sense to me at the time

I was young and wild

I didn’t noticed that shoulder was wrong till a yoga pose brought it to light

But it didn’t really bother me for almost 40 years

Till a foolish yoga teacher brought me down

 

I hold the pose called mountain

Eyes closed I notice I’m not standing on my bones

My muscles are doing the bone’s job and I’m getting exhausted just standing here

I lack the grace that is balance

How long has this been going on?

 

I think of the poses that aren’t in this plane

You know, the cockeyed ones, the twisty ones, the ones that turn part of your pelvis forward and part of it back

I wonder what’s happening to my spine and am I standing on my bones or are my muscles being used badly

What would you do?

 

I want to live a fearless life, like you.

I won’t know the consequences till I make the action

Your body is not mine

You may suggest something to me but you don’t know for sure

I may suggest something to you in your wild life

But you may not listen

Here in zero gravity we are trying to hold on and we are hoping to let go and we never know for certain what will happen before we jump

 

You are a mysterious person, doing mysterious things

Like motherhood

Every child different and you don’t know how to be but there’s an order to things

You do what you think best so they don’t go bad

You are trying to affect energy you’ve never seen before

It moves in mysterious ways

You will become energy you have never been before

It moves you in mysterious ways

 

We are all kin and sometimes I am the mother and sometimes the child

In all ways the student and mostly the teacher

But no matter

Mystery is when you don’t know the outcome

What would you do?

 

This pear is too pretty to eat but there’s an order to things

Fulfill your purpose or rot

What would you do for love?

P.S. When my husband Rob Lindsay takes a picture of something he loves, he turns it into art. 🙂

Racing to Red Lights.

Habit and chains

Running late but barely moving,

Watching the world in slow motion.

 

Like a bad dream pressing on against invisible current,

Swimming upstream an unfamiliar river by instinct not plan.

 

Spinal stenosis screams don’t go back,

A bulging disc shouts don’t go forward.

Tired knees beg one to stop stepping,

An aching hip whispers there’s nowhere to rest.

 

Do not sit down!

Spin in the eddies.

 

So many of us out there

Some of us hiding

Some showing too much.

 

It’s all about me,

It’s all about you.

 

Reagan cried “Tear down that wall”

Then he tore out Jimmy Carter’s solar panels.

Martin Luther murdered before forty

 Died with the heart of a sixty year old.

Breaking down, he kept up.

 

Is anything clear?

Is anyone right?

 

Gabbing and gossiping and wasting away,

What’s her sentence?

She got the chair.

 

2013 post inauguration day.  I think Obama finally gave a speech without invoking Reagan. Every time he mentions Reagan I think of Stockholm syndrome. The Republicans exhumed Reagan as God when they needed an imaginary deity. I don’t see why anyone else has to play that game.