My father knows yoga in his bones.
The muscles that lengthen
around them are ornaments.
After the chores he slides the coffee table clear,
rolls out his mat, smokes a bowl,
and sits with his legs stretched in front in a V -
then exhales, unravels, forehead down to his knee,
mixes pain with the psychedelic air.
And unlike those February ballplayers
with their hup-two-three toe-touch machismo,
when he stretches he holds it
(body emptied of breath, it shrinks with the effort)
till the snow thumping the window starts to
take hold and spread, blot out the darkness outside.
Finally inhaling as he straightens his trunk,
he pauses, full bellied, and down again-
like a bellows contracting, expelling
each out-breath at pace.
I think about the logic of his staying
with that pull in his Achilles Tendon.
Mere mortals, resigned to a shrunken field of comfort,
are squeezed into baby steps,
dwarfed by pain’s prospect at arm’s length.
Dad's lean into pain is audacious!
He's our samurai breath control master -
befriending the enemy, mixing it with his mind,
then streaming with neural impulses
he takes me aside, still high:
Attention to pain's propellants, its twinges,
will still bristle with discomfort, son,
unearthing another bulb that much closer
to the centre of absolution from the numb.
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