I love the Sunday poem section of Gwarlingo, so it especially thrilled me to join so many of my poetic heroes in this column with my poem “Shavasana.” It feels appropriate that it should be a poem about meeting mortality–something I am exploring more intimately than ever. Thank you to editor James Crews, for selecting this poem. I also like the way he always suggests launching points for writing with each selected poem.
Shavasana
Once again, the field rehearses how to die.
Some of the grass turns golden first. Some
simply fades into brown. Just this morning,
I, too, lay in corpse pose, practicing
how to let myself be totally held by the earth
without striving, how to meet the day
without rushing off to do the next necessary
or beautiful thing. Soon, the grass will bend
or break, molder or disintegrate. Every year,
the same lesson in how to join
the darkness, how to be unmade, how quietly
we might lean into the uncertainty,
how generous the ground.
–Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer