The Yoga Commune

→ PUBLISHED IN ISSUE ISSUE NO. 29: SPRING/SUMMER 2022

for Vishwa Nath and Sudhir Dass

Monday

Flies line the dormitory corridors. No one sweeps them up.

Elders tell about a student who tried to hide his leather shoes

from his guru. The guru saw them and shrugged— Cow’s already

dead.

Wednesday

Breakfast is one hundred steps away and I miss the meal. If

there are finite breaths in this lifetime, I decide not to waste

them running towards oatmeal and cottage cheese.

Monday

Another visitor smokes an e- cigarette, wafts chemical citronella

in her wake.

Tuesday

No one feeds the wild turkeys on the land, but sometimes

deer get a slip of crust. I arrange and rearrange the flies on the

windowsill next to the river rocks a friend drilled holes into

then strung into a necklace.

Friday

Center staff spot mountain lion tracks in neighboring property,

urge guests not to run at dusk or dawn and if you encounter one

GET BIG AND get LOUD. I’ve practiced the opposite too

much to remember how.

Wednesday

In morning meditation I think about sex and tally the dollars

saved not buying daily coffee here. The eggs not eaten. Think

about whether my face in meditation last night betrayed the

Amazon shopping list accumulating in my mind.

Wednesday

A teacher says You don’t know how to relax. I am afraid of hair

in the drain. When I close my eyes, I see jet pollution. A silent

monk stops me walking to dinner. If you live a long life, he writes

on his miniature chalkboard, You will be old.

Tuesday

Hoarding fruit from the fruit basket. Stashing tea bags in my

pockets. How many gray hairs can I find in the walk from dorm

to meditation room?

Thursday

A military veteran and arachnophobe, my roommate debates

for twelve minutes before sweeping the spider on her blanket

into a napkin then the trash. Don’t worry, she reassures herself,

It’ll probably just turn up in my next life as my mother.

Saturday

Now is a good time to write a will.

Sunday

A community elder takes to me, requests a dining room lunch

date. My life is a bag of marbles, he admits. Pretty, and ultimately

insignificant. He says he wrote poems until his guru told him

poetry would not bring him enlightenment. In his twenties he

tripped on mushrooms in the Pacific Coastal Ranges. Walking

back to the car, he says, The mountain said to me: All worlds are

words I have heard before.