Today’s PAD prompt: routines:

Practice

I used to insist that yoga wasn’t for me.
There had been a class that wasn’t horrible
but by the end of it, I understood exactly why
my best friend had sent her music stand
crashing into the rehearsal room wall
and become a pharmacist instead.

Even Downward Dogs flash me back
to junior high PE, my hands never quite
clueing in on how to catch or block or propel
even my own body above the damned rail
or across the monkey bars. The word “pull-up”
was already my synonym for humiliation,
long before I reached the age
of responsibility for toddlers and the tottering —
but now there is no grade and no end
to the term, and outside of this room,
my hands willingly travel the tedium of scales
in their quest for fluency in Bach. The older
I become, the further away
all summits seem, and yet the distance
less cause for despair: I rest on my mat, my mind
tracing anew old Hokusai’s lines.

- pld