Sadhana

Sadhana is a Sanskrit work meaning spiritual practice. It is doing the same thing day after day until it becomes an unconscious habit, like tying your shoes, only sadhana relates to more intangible things like the emotions. My hope is that if I do my sadhana every day I will be able to deal with my emotions the same way that I tie my shoes.

Sadhana

A scent upon the surface.
A dew covered mountainside at dawn.

Insects pass their mantra on to the bush birds
twittering as the sun strikes the far side of the valley.

Callused fingertips. A shaky hand.
Not many years left of doing.

A stooped woman leans forward to pick tea leaves.
Heavy basket slung across her shoulders. Crooked hips.

Who do you belong to the same way
the leaves belong to the branches?

The air is so humid she pretends she is swimming.
Nobody ever taught her, but she knows how anyway.

The game is to forget what you’re doing her mother told her.
When she was a girl she used to believe clouds had faces.

Do the branches wonder if they belong to the roots?
She’s lived her whole life in this valley.

At the end of the day she sits on her porch drinking tea.
The insects take up the mantra as the moon peaks.

Her children have all moved to a far distant city.
If she could write, she’d tell them how the earth turns when
she stands in place.

Vultures draft on currents of air she can’t feel so close to the ground.
There’s a road leading out of the valley.

I still might take it, she thinks.
I still might learn to write.

One last sip.
What do the leaves at the bottom say?

Go to sleep, old woman.
There’s work to be done in the morning.