Sixty push-ups in three sets of 20. Ok, it wasn’t really 3 sets of 20.  It was one set of twenty (the last set), and two sets of “sixteen, pause, and four”.  Between each set came a qi gong form: Five Golden Coins between the first and second, and Eight Pieces of Silk between the second and the third.  Still, this is progress, right?

Today’s poem is Closing.  It’s the last poem in the sequence of poems that began with the Opening poem back on Day 125 of this year. Closing is a particularly simple move: Step the left foot backwards in line with the right foot, gently lift the arms, and then lightly press them down to energetically close one’s self to the energies one has just spent twenty minutes (or 60 days! [I thought I took one or two days off in there?) going progressively through the steps of the system of study presented here.

Step back your left foot to match with your right,
one next to other as they were before —
at the start, when you made your left foot light
and carried chi on your hip. The great store
of chi you sheltered within your center,
is now released, and regathered again,
even as farmers prepare for winter
or generals go about training new men.
Hands retreat almost to the chest, then pause
before they push all residuals low
into the earth-dragon’s slumbering jaws.
Body comes to rest, attuned to the flow
of life within, joining heaven and earth:
at peace in conflict, a type of rebirth.

Maybe hokey, I know.  But finished.

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