Poem Two: Weekly Theme: Safety

 

SLOWING DOWN


Standing in the heated room,
doing yoga at one hundred and three degrees,
I contort my body into as close
to a perfect arc as I can get
with my crooked spine and half frozen shoulders
that slowly thaw in the humidity
of the carpeted room, while sweat
rolls down my body onto the floor.
The windows fog with heavy droplets,
and the teacher keeps saying.
“Be safe.  Do what feels good
for your body.  Don't force anything.
You don't want to injure yourself.”
I have to laugh, because I know
what danger really is.
Danger has come too easily
for most of my life,
and I've welcomed it at the door
with a bottle of wine and two glasses,
flung open my arms and embraced it like a lover.
Danger is staying at the bar until 1:45 AM
and then driving twenty miles over the speed limit
to make the 2:00 ferry
on the other side of town,
but missing it anyway, and sleeping it off on the dock.
Danger is loving the person you shouldn't love,
driving past his house and craning your neck
to look at his window
from the freeway, just to see
whether his kitchen light is still on.
Danger is hitchhiking through Mississippi in January
with a seventeen year old boy
when you are only twenty,
standing on the overpass with your thumb sticking out,
and no money, with half an ounce of marijuana in your backpack. 
Danger is eating the whole pie,
crossing against the red lights,
defying the authorities,
dangling off the cliff with one hand, and laughing.
Danger is putting all of your eggs
into a basket made of air
and running as fast as you can with your eyes closed
and then shooting yourself out of a cannon
with a bayonet in your teeth,
and surviving, and then doing it again
because it was so fun.
But in four years, I'll be sixty,
so I listen to my teacher.
I push gradually into the pose,
and ease off slightly when it begins to hurt.
I don't want to injure myself again.
It takes too long to heal.