The Earth Is In Our Practice

Copyright Lance Kinseth, 2012

From their impossible distances,

The swallow and hummingbird have returned.

Either here in this season or far off, there, in our winter (esi or la),

They are always homeward bound.

May our lives be like a swallow’s flight.

In the Northern hemisphere,

The roses have awakened from their sleep

With luminous sunsets finishing the days.

The blooming sorrel and the plushest grasses of the year—

Everything softens.

Born in ice-cold winter, 

Young red squirrels, having quick-learned gymnastics,

Come down out of the trees.

In the garden, the first litters of cottontails emerge,

And the first nestlings—robins and cardinals—

And the taste of small, dense, sweet strawberries.

The longest days quick-build toward their coming crescendo,

But still, all of this daylight will remain a cool fire, and

Far from the hottest fires of the year in the lessened light of late summer.

Now, in sweet June, Thoreau admonished us,

            We are more of the Earth, farther from the heavens these days.

In the swelling richest of the landscape,

With the Earth pressing more into our senses,

BODY-MIND PRACTICES may be more visceral—“more of the Earth.”

And so, perhaps we lean more intuitively into our Earthen bones and ligaments,

Leaning softly, like waking cats,

Savoring the stretching melt of all of the back

And the outward reach of the fingertips

And reach of the tailbone,

Opening on freedom more than control.