Pilates Zoom

We cultivate the knack
of getting down on the floor and
back up three or four times each day.

The constellation of cables,
chips and thin air through which
our leader observes us is mysterious

as prayer, more predictable, precise.
One’s ability to rise from the floor
after falling is a blessing now,

its practice a daily office. Careful
not to let my knee travel forward of my toes.
I am reminded of genuflection.

My mother would  call herself a heathen
when she told us how her marriage almost
began with her tipping over the alter rail

as my father paused to cross himself,
go down one one knee. I breathe, in child’s pose,
all the way down  into the bottom of my back,

making space between the vertebrae.
We are all atheists now. There is an earring butterfly
under the sofa. Later I will kneel again to fish it out.

Sue Butler took up both walking and Creative Writing in retirement from a career in General Practice; both unpredictable forms of meditation on life, its grace, pain and peculiarity.
Her pamphlet Learning from the Body is published by Yaffle Press.