Attending Yoga at Winter Solstice

Attending Yoga at Winter Solstice

Class starts at five and already it’s dark.
Radiant sconces in the Rec-Center yoga room
draw us like men to a dusky bar on a rain-split 
night in December. Black locust trees twitch 

scarred branches outside the windows, stripped 
of their nimble fringe, as we fold bodies 
like quilts around suspended hearts, release 
our breath, laden with its spores of longing. 

Summer solstice, the class will dwindle—but not
in winter, on the coast, where we store light 
in the root and go deep. Where we ride out
storms that threaten to drown us. I rest 

into Balasana, Child’s Pose, and let it pull 
my tears like a drunk man’s whiskey, as I think
how winter has stolen you—each year but this,
and how I clutch my measuring stick as waters rise.

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