I salute the morning on a blue yoga mat I picked up at “America’s Biggest Thrift Store.” I seldom roll it up. It lays on the floor of the kitchen like a welcome mat. Sometimes those that stop by recognize it as a yoga mat and walk around it. I was a little taken back the first time somebody tromped over it with no heed to the Kundalini, the Hatha, the Vinyassa, the aerial silks or even the hot stuff. But now it’s let them all come. To be honest my morning prayer/stretch routine was a little feeble anyway. I distract easily. I lose track of which stretches I’ve done and which I haven’t. I worry I have early onset dementia. I try to be conscious of my breathing, but end up thinking about what I need to get done and how I’m already running late. I fear going to an actual yoga class where I’m sure I’d be corrected for years of incorrect poses.
Just let me do my version of child’s pose in the dusty barn boot tracks of Eli my Amish neighbor who is raising 9 children with his wife LaVina, Verna in low cut black work boots plain comes by to hang curtains I asked her to sew, Andy drops in with wet clay on the rims of his heels with his draft horse plow team of Chester, Timmy, Molly and Dolly waiting outside. Let me receive communion as I do a chest opening pose in hay chaff that fell from the pant cuff of Ezra who stopped by to ask for a ride to an Amish farmer twenty miles over that also pulls teeth. Let all the feet come: work boots, barefoot, dirty white socks from leaky boots, going to church shiny black. May all paths intersect on this mat. A cross roads scuffed by breath, manure, animal, plant melding into a soil that sings a song, grows a prayer, loves a neighbor.