Carly Yoga Poem: Svadhyaya

After two days of driving (from Chicago at Chris' family to New York, my family) and not much hatha yoga, I have kept up a different kind of practice with Carly's poems. I've posted a couple here before, to happy feedback, and today is another beauty. For days when getting in a hatha practice causes less peace than the practice itself would bring, poems like this help me remember the other types of yoga out there. This feels like bhakti, or devotion, to me. Poetry can have the power to bring the mind to a new place. Not being the poet here, I have a hard time describing it.  The best way I can try is to say they make me feel quiet, like sitting inside a warm house while white, heavy snow lies in piles on the ground and continues to fall from the sky. The world both muted and brought into clearer focus.


See? Just reading it is getting me all poetic and sucheesuch.


Better just read it for yourself. It also can be found on the Jaya Yoga Center page and Carly's own site.

Svadhyaya

for myself

Ever since middle school

I was the queen of flashcards---

If I wanted to learn a definition

or a foreign word, I used an index card.

All I had to do was turn the card,

the answer waiting on the other side.

This or that,

not this, not that.

Sometimes it got tricky.

In Hebrew one word means lip, edge, or shore

and verbs deviate from their patterns

making conjugations go awry,

the way my tie-dye camp t-shirt erupted

in color, not the spiral I spent hours wrapping

rubber bands around fabric,

like how the journey ends up being

not the one planned,

which is what I tell my college students

when they are writing their first short stories,

that you can’t know how it will end

until you get there, that unless you are surprised,

you can’t surprise your reader,

which is what I think about in asana practice

as I fold my body over and around itself,

taking the stance of sage, warrior, and animal,

what is it I am chasing after---

the precision of precision,

to make myself better, to erase

the mistakes I’ve made, or rather,

like the mollusk who spends years turning

parasites that accidentally entered its shell

to pearls, that if not for accidents or mistakes,

then also not for pearls

worth prying open the oyster

of my heart.