Lucid Mind

I'm attending a class in creative writing. I'm trying to write poetry again.
(photo is one of Getty Images)
LUCID MIND
“We play for blood,”
Said the group of women in their nineties
Who play contract bridge every Thursday
“It’s what keep us going.”
They preserve their mental sharpness
For odds and strategy
In a long mental embrace.

You can be the woman
Descending on a staircase
Listening to Mendelssohn’s concerto in violin
Walking towards the kitchen
To cook lemon-ginger scented shrimps.

But a mind can loiter
gather driftwoods, throwaways
and build a bonfire on the beach
Or carve a bird,
A koala bear.

You can hike the mountains
Engage your mind in colors,
Voices and movements in the thicket
Or scour under logs, mounds of leaves
For mushrooms, net of fibers
Remembering the shapes and looks
Of Amanitas.

“Choose a morning when the lights are soft”
Tour the cathedral at Chartres
Or study any cathedral spires
Your medieval eye
Learning its story and sentiment.

You are a Zen woman
Who goes to the village every day
Stepping on slippery stones
Eyes ,unblinking
To cross the stream through the forest
Where the tiger waits.

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