Poetry gives my life a little more air, space and grace. I once had a poetry professor who taught that a poem needed less than 10 words to get to the crux of the poem. It is the space within in a poem, he taught, that reveals its depth. Like poetry, yoga needs very little to provide me space in my body, space in my breathing and space in my mind. I have learned that the depth of the practice isn’t revealed by how many poses and how much I can do, but really how much space I let in. For me, poetry and yoga occupy the same place in my heart–a place where there is always wonder, grace and delight. Oh, and such a richness of imagery. The conversation I have with my body on the mat often unfolds like a poem full of imagery and nuance.
As Academy of American Poets Chancellor, C.D. Wright said, “Poetry is a necessity of life. It is a function of poetry to locate those zones inside us that would be free, and declare them so.” It is no coincidence, I think, that yoga can do the same. Both poetry and yoga touch the visceral part of us, the heart part of us. We are not just body and mind, these practices remind us. The part of us that is connected to each other, that can feel another, hope for another, give grace to another, cry and connect to another–that is the heart. And I don’t mean the physical pumping heart, though that is perhaps a good place to feel the sensation of connection. I am referring to the part of us that is the pulse of life that exists in our depths.
I like to think that this part of us exists to connect to others and that in connecting, we become messengers of all that is good and perfect in this world. We become messengers, or perhaps harbingers, of light into the world–and this is what yoga and poetry both do in my life. When we allow ourselves this connection to one another and to the world, we remain engaged and awake–able to really experience all the world has to offer. One of my favorite poems by Mary Oliver Messenger speaks of this very thing. Oliver writes:
My work is loving the world
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird–
equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.
Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect?
Let me keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,
which is mostly standing still and learning to be
astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all the ingredients are here,
which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy
to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is
that we live forever.
All of the ingredients for gratitude, for grace, for deep attention are right in front of us. And for me, my practice of observing the minutia of life so that I may write a poem and the practice of observing the minutia of physical and mental sensations in yoga have both opened me to these ingredients. It’s not in the grand poses, the endless words, or the astounding moments that we find daily joy, or that we understand what it means to live forever. It’s in surrendering to the space, the pauses, that we can stand still and learn to be astonished messengers.
