Tai Chi Woman – a pom by Carol Stanton

Tai Chi Woman                                                                                 
                                                                                                         
At first, she just                                                                                
      watched    
               the slow, 
      dance-like 
movements 
      of people
practicing tai chi
   in Golden Gate Park,

wave cloud hands,
       strum the lute,
push the mountain,

watching them 
       gave her a peaceful,
contented  feeling,

when she began to 
   practice tai chi,
         she loved  
             how calm
      she felt afterwards,

       her breathing
began to change,

slow    
  deep 
       breaths,

soon she found
     her life
           began 
        to change,

no longer
    fearful,
          unhappy,
                lost,

she became
    cloud waver,
       lute strummer,

mountain pusher.

                                                                                                           

Carol Stanton lives in Pittsburgh PA. She is a member of the Mad Women in the Attic program at Carlow University.  Her poems have been published in Voices from the Attic, Paterson Literary Review, and other journals. She is a retired psychotherapist and taught writing and spiritually oriented courses at the University of San Francisco for many years.