By Susan Blackwell Ramsey

Featured Art: Untitled by Joseph Taylor

Sock drawer with its moth husks, limp mismatches,
       rank refrigerator’s stink of shame, closet
               whose back wall I don’t remember . . .

In Sanskrit abhyasa means practice, discipline,
       not giving up, but starting over
               and over and over again. Just start. Abhyasa.

So when I unroll my yoga mat
       and it promptly rolls back up, I flip it over,
               fling myself down on it, grunt “abhyasa.”

Veteran of fresh starts. I’ve trained myself
       to believe there will be dustless bookshelves,
               push-ups, French refresher courses, kale.

This time will be different. It always is.
       Maybe the trick is shorter and shorter gaps
               between the restarts until they run together,

like rolling out the lawn mower in May,
       working to get a cough, another, three, and with a roar
               it starts again. Once more that green smell rises.

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Susan Blackwell Ramsey’s work has appeared in Best American Poetry, and she has received a MacDowell fellowship. Her book, A Mind Like This, won the Prairie Schooner Poetry Book Prize and was published by the University of Nebraska Press. She lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Originally appeared in NOR 29