It was sunny when I went to yoga this morning. Now it’s gloomy and gray. I seem to have spent all of the sunshine either looking at my mat or now grading student work.
Leonard Cohen Gives Me Advice
-- after "Anthem"
Oh, honey, where is your mind?
You're on the yoga mat but
swirling like a madwoman in plans
to rearrange the furniture, buy more
shit you don't need, dye your hair
another ridiculous color. You're evoking
people you can't help, those sucked
into a private vortex, inventing problems
that don't belong to you --
the hairpin curve in a colleague's career,
a young poet's cracked screens,
a woman's brown eyes drowning in the front row,
spots where bodies stubbornly refuse
to appear, blank spots in grade books --
as if you're so important to these stories,
these alternate universes, as if
you can fix the holes in their narratives
with a few concrete details,
an active verb or two,
maybe the addition of a character.
You're forgetting, lovely, there's a crack
in everything,
and we're all broken, ashamed, caught
in plot twists we never anticipated,
alternately bored and out of love with ourselves
and wrapped up in destructive rage
against all the machines.
But those breaks, that's how
the light leaks in.
So give up up looking for the perfect
offering, the spell you think will set the worlds
all right -- and, while you have time,
ring the bells that still can ring.
