It’s not Complicated
Our yoga teacher
calmly commands
our attention,
as she stands
a perfect tree
on the waxed wooden floor
of our ancient gymnasium,
and proposes, this week,
to teach us how to breathe.
“It’s not complicated,”
she whispers conspiratorially.
“When you finish a breath, in
you let a breath out.”
“Joyfully,” she adds with a sigh
that compounds our perplexity.
But it is not complicated, and
by the tenth or twentieth try,
we are emitting such gladdening exhalations
that only those grand practitioners,
who hover above the river Ganges,
inhaling and exhaling in rhythm
with the planetary globs
would dare to rival us.
It is as if we were born to breathing.

“And next week,” she says
with a barely perceptible wink,
“We all will learn to stand.”