Most days I stretch and touch my toes. My friends I know from yoga may think this comes easily to me but I am not naturally flexible. I have practiced on being flexible since I was a teenager. I am working to stretch my understanding of racial inequality and how our nation has gotten to where we are. Every day I will stretch, read, make lists, take photographs, form pots, make drawings, take what other action I can as my way to greater flexibility and understanding.
PRACTICE
I touch my toes.
When I was a child,
this was difficult.
Now I touch my toes daily.
In 2012, in Sanford, Florida,
someone nearby was touching her toes before bed.
Three weeks ago,
in the Philippines or Myanmar, someone was stretching.
Tomorrow, someone elsewhere will bend
first to one side, then the other.
I also do ten push-ups, morning and evening.
Women’s push-ups,
from the knees.
They resemble certain forms of religious bowing.
In place of one, two, four, seven,
I count the names of incomprehension: Sanford, Ferguson,
Charleston,
Aleppo, Sarajevo, Nagasaki.
I never reach: Troy, Ur.
I have done this for years now.
Bystander. Listener. One of the lucky.
I do not seem to grow stronger.
—Jane Hirshfield, from Ledger, Alfred A. Knopf, 2020