Yoga Teacher Training at Sixty-Three

Old body, I love you. I stand in Mountain Pose

among thirty other yogis, palms forward and open,

hands stretching their soiled centers,

the flat intelligence of touch restoring balance

in this swell of effort, both loss and learning.

Glaciers could melt beneath me now,

and I wouldn’t drown. The teacher tells us

Chaturanga, and we drop—a swirl of lowering

bodies, gravity and strength taking us down.

What is belief in the wilderness of aging?

I offer my hands to heart center in a prayer

of breath and attention—as young

students practice with me, as we’re told

to welcome the bodies we have.

Then in child’s pose I rest, shoulders to the earth,

eyes closed, returning for this moment

to the self of decades ago, body more lovely, less

wise. As we sit now to end our lesson, I sing

my om with more black crows in my voice

or sometimes gray doves, light, almost white, rising.