I ran away last weekend to Kripalu, a yoga retreat center in Lenox, Massachusettes. Kripalu is an amazing place for peace, rest, clarity. Of course, you have to get over the cement walls in the oh, so spartan dorm rooms. But after I quieted my PTSD reaction to thinking I was back in college, I relaxed into a powerful weekend reconnecting with my dearest friend from law school. That is, until the Sunday morning yoga class. The instructor, a young woman with a breathy, soothing (ok, maybe a little annoying) voice, said she would like to open the practice with a poem.

Let me tell you. I am not a poetry girl. Poetry has always eluded me, made me uncomfortable, as if there is this secret world of words that I cannot understand. Tell me what you mean. Don't ask me to feel it. So I sat there ready to tolerate whatever words I would not understand.

In her delicate voice she said, "listen to the beginning lines of Mary Oliver's poem 'Wild Geese.'"

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.

And there it was - the one poem I ever felt in my bones. A friend read it to me a few months ago. At the time, it ripped my heart open, unexpectedly, completely. So there I was, sitting on my yoga mat, crying while my heart ripped open again. And then I laughed. How did I end up crying on a god damn yoga mat? My life was supposed to be about bringing people to tears on the witness stand during withering cross examination. Looks like my plans changed. I wonder what's next.

ali