Happy New Year in the first year of a decade!  I’m launching this blog to connect in a communitarian and literary fashion.  We begin this new year with fear that we are on the verge of yet another war.  My hope is for finding ways of peace and understanding.  

From my recently published poetry book Portals: A Memoir in Verse, I offer this effort. 

Robert E Lee’s Yoga Pipe Dream

What if,

before Appomattox, before Gettysburg,
Robert E Lee had practiced yoga?  In a parallel
universe, he could have found that

doing Downward Facing Dog would bring
his world view upside down,
usurp his truth to say that no man should own another,
that stretching his legs and calves against
the earth this way would do better for him
watching his men die
at the hands of the Yanks.

What if,

before Chancellorsville, his greatest victory,
when he sent his soldiers with doomed
Stonewall Jackson to take the left flank
around the backside of Union General
Hooker, the man who wanted a dictator to win
this bloody war,

what if instead,

Lee did a Sun Salutation, pointing his arms
straight above him, heaven-ward, while
he folded forward, stepped back into a plank,
then lowered himself down on his belly,
humbled to the earth?

What if then Lee pushed himself up on his hands
to Downward Facing Dog again,
stepped forward
into another fold,
humbled himself
toward earth
once more,

if he then slowly, carefully, followed his breath,
raised up to his full height, arms lifted above
hoary head toward heaven,
then lowered his arms through to heart center?

What if,
instead of the glory, the call for courage,
the honor and passion for region,
he chose country and peace
freedom to enslaved?

Then we would not care about statues,
about words or torches,
signs or marches.

Instead, we would know the prana
or life,
the ongoing of peace.

Portals: A Memoir in Verse, poetry, from Kelsay Books