Marjorie Moorhead
Practice
As the whole household sleeps
this morning after Thanksgiving,
I practice tai chi exercises
shifting weight, shifting breath
making circles with my arms, hips,
eventually coming to moves named
for Bear, Eagle, Lion, Crane. My blood
is pumping but my soul is still.
In movement, but calm. I float
in space not concentrating anymore
on Impending Tragedy.
Our household; extended family; the world
seemed an accident waiting to happen.
It still is, but I have spread the mountains
with my arms, and I can flex and flow
come what may. Maybe.
Marjorie Moorhead is the author of Survival: Trees, Tides, Song (Finishing Line Press, 2019) and Survival Part 2: Trees, Birds, Ocean, Bees (Duck Lake Books, 2020). Her poems have appeared in HIV Here & Now, Rising Phoenix Review, and Sheila-Na-Gig Online, Porter House Review, Tiny Lit Seed, and other journals, as well as in several anthologies, including Planet in Peril (Fly on the Wall, 2019), edited by Isabelle Kenyon; From The Ashes (Animal Heart, 2019), Amanda McLeod & Mela Blust; Birchsong: Poetry Centered in VT. Vol. II (The Blueline, 2018), edited by Northshire Poets Alice Wolf Gilborn, Carol Cone, David Mook, Marcia Angermann, Peter Bradley and Monica Stillman; and others. She received an Indolent Books scholarship to attend a summer 2019 workshop at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. Moorhead writes from the NH/VT border.
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