Learning to Practice Yoga
After a Lifetime Without 
BY KATHY KAHN 

At the end of winter, my ancient river was clogged with storm debris.
The main channel was a mess of muddy ice floes and shattered logs,
and my tributaries were littered with dead brush and uprooted trees.
It would be a job of work to get it cleared, ready, I hoped, for spring.
But I wasn’t sure it could ever run clean and swift again.

I approached it gently, with a small push there and pull here,
Slowly I drew out drowned branches and sticky mud dams.
I cleared one steep bank, one pile of stones, one reed-buried beach.
I cleared every spot along the riverside, one by mindful one,
and after time, the current was restored and the water ran clear.

My ancient river still has seasons, still has weather, heat and ice,
and trees fall and vines uproot and catch the mud and stop the flow.
But now I know what a living river looks like and feels like,
and when a marsh begins to form, I can stretch in the current,
and breathe the nourishing breeze, and the river runs free.