top of page

ROOTS

the madrigal, volume ii

Now And At The Holy Hour: Lessons on Yoga 

by noeme grace c tabor-farjani

I sit in Vajrasana, my knees kiss the earth, my eyes not seeing but spectral of lights, bringing in the Silence. There are birds singing on top of my head, daring not to peck on the crown. A helicopter approaches the roof. Seriously? At six am in this metro? I return to Silence. She presents you with: a rooster crowing from a distance, a motor bike whisking by, crickets’ leftover songs hours after sunrise. Some cannot just get enough of the night’s glories. How a neighbor can’s whistling kettle sound so loud? Mine’s done at dawn, for tea. My breath whistles, too. Should it not be like the wave?

 

Inhale: more nameless birds tweet and chirp.

Exhale: a dog barks from another block.

Silence rushes inside me like warm rain.

No static, only soothing disturbance.

 

Inhale: the crisp air, the coffee, the leaves, the dew.

The lights just keep marbling.

Some tingling, like trickles of water, from my temples down to my ears, down to my nape, down

to my shoulders.

Exhale: grateful for this casing of a body.

This is to be alive, to smell, feel, hear, taste, see everything all at once yet one, by, one.

 

I sit in Sukhasana, at ease with the absence of movement, only breathing. I bring in knowing: here and now is what matters, here and now, I breathe in weaponry and royal cape, a crown of light on my head, its roots stretched, attached to my heart. I breathe in stillness and surrender for the there and then.

 

I breathe in allowing children screams,

dirty dishes, stained floors, and blank pages.

I breathe in flow, like eventual fading of crickets songs,

The passing of the helicopter, the neighbor now sipping her hot drink,

the kettle cools down. The roosters and dogs slowly take their turn to listen and watch as motor bike sounds build up their way into the day:

a gate squeaks to open for a car going out of the garage,

Another motor bike passes by.

 

The morning chorus stops

paving way for the city noise.

I breathe in adversities: the packing

and unpacking of baggage, the selection

of what to bring

and what to leave behind.

Have I forgotten?

 

I sit in Sukhasana,

at ease with leaving.

Noeme Grace C. Tabor-Farjani has authored Letters from Libya: Memoirs-in-Letters (2018) which chronicled her family’s escape from the Second Libyan Civil War in 2014. A featured writer at the digital exhibits of The Aerogramme Center for Arts and Culture and Floresta Magazine, her works have been published in Your Dream Journal (US), Global Poemic (India), Luna Luna (US), Fahmidan (Kuwait), 433 Magazine (US), Milly Magazine (New Zealand), Rogue Agent (US), Cicada Magazine (Hong Kong/Japan), Harpy Hybrid Review (US) The Font: A Literary Journal for Language Teachers (Australia), Eunoia Review (Singapore), and forthcoming from Dreich Press (Scotland), Cobra Milk (US), and Voice & Verse Poetry Magazine (Hong Kong).

 

 

A featured author at Indiana-based Heartland Society of Women Writers, she previously taught translation, children’s literature, and drama at Capitol University where she defended her PhD dissertation on Flow Theory in creative writing pedagogy. She currently teaches humanities at St. Mary’s School in the southern Philippines, and is working on a collection of poems on spirituality and the body. She has recently served as guest author for a morning show in GMA Regional TV.

 

 

Find her on Facebook and on her YouTube channel. Other link: https://linktr.ee/ngctaborfarjani

bottom of page