October 17, 2025
Off the Mat
Just as Surely
as you move towards the exit door
preparing to leave market basket,
weekly groceries in your cart,
samhi, a worker you’ve seen before,
comes in from the windy outdoors
pushing in front of him
a dozen empty grocery carts,
each one nested into the one before it,
all of them together a train
powered by his strong arms, keen
eyes, and considerable experience—
no track, no radar, no lines
taped on the floor, no electronic
signaling system, just samhi
doing his job on a wednesday morning
in october, steering that train
straight and true right
into the waiting back end
of the last cart of the last train
he parked in the holding area
a short while ago.
he does not make a single
adjustment as he couples one train
to the other. samhi’s train
slips exquisitely into position.
as he turns to head outside
again for the next train,
he sees you raise both hands,
two thumbs up.
you look right at each other,
making eye contact
for just the briefest moment,
connecting fully
in simple joy and wonder
at a job well done,
both grinning.
just as surely as those trains of carts
connect, you two connect. just as surely,
you both move into the day
powered by the light of connection.
—dotty seiter
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3 x 3″; watercolor, ink, and watercolor pencil on paper
card #24 in a series of color swatches
2025
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Notes about poem and art:
• “Just as Surely” is a gift of attunement to paying attention and attunement to ‘homework’ from my yoga instructor. Victoria invited us recently to watch for ways our yin practice might show up off the mat. Yin poses are held for minutes instead of seconds to create a gentle, sustained stretch in deep tissues. The goal is to find an edge—an appropriate level of intensity with significant stretch but not pain. The principle of surrender is key, encouraging both release of resistance and stimulation of energy flow. My experience off the mat: I am in a wrestling match with a poem I’m trying to write. Oh!, I think, a chance to take yin off the mat. I sit for many minutes, find my edge with my infuriating struggle, surrender to my discomfort, eventually walk away, mostly at peace, no poem. The next morning an entirely different poem presents itself just begging to be written and just about writes itself.
• I caught the coneheads portrayed in Unseen Expectations while they were in late season transition—blossoms still sporting some scraggly pink petals but also sporting seeds and some leaves at a tipping point between green and rust-brown.
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12 responses to “Off the Mat”
Carol, thank you for your thoughtful comment. You’ve touched on an aspect of poetry that seems to bubble up in me—telling what might be “just another ordinary story” but which becomes something else altogether through the lens of seeing the extraordinary that resides as potentail energy in the ordinary.
Our gardens remain active! While many plants have lived out this season’s life cycle and gone to seed others are now coming into their fullness—Montauk daisies, asters, mums, and roses on their second bloom!
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This taking yin off the mat poem is just marvelous. Thank you for the poem…the story behind and in it…and the inspiration.
I will be watching and celebrating the guy or gal with the train every time I go to the grocery store from now on! And although I don’t think I will hold my daily stretches for minutes….I will lean into them a few more seconds finding a bit of that edge you described.
I have been trying to connect with strangers in this very sort of way also. When I see something positive…I try and say something. Thank you for propelling me forward with that.
And what’s not to love about a scraggly late in the season coneflower! You captured it beautifully!
MaryAnn, joy, beauty, connection: they’re everywhere! I’m so grateful for OUR connection—I know that your commitment to finding joy and beauty is key in fanning my own flame to be a seeker of same. The everyday moments are increasingly important and meaningful to me.
My yoga instructor leads us to occasional yin poses for part of our practice, and I’m invariably glad for that embodied reminder even though I don’t know that I’d want an entirely yin practice : )
Scraggly late-in-season coneheads! Gotta love ’em!
Thank you for your thought-ful comments
Again (see my previous post and our conversation there), thank you for reflecting back to me my description of process, struggles, surrender, and result, because I need to be ever mindful of same for my own big AHAs. I am so grateful for everything that painting and writing waken me to, including friends such as yourself whom how would I ever have met you if not for our art and writing??! woohoo!
Roseanne, I’m grateful for your beautiful tender comments. Thank you. It’s so powerful to know that my imagery was vivid in a way that had you feeling you were walking through the store with me. Wow.
I asked Victoria if I could share my poem and my notes about it with our class last week and she granted me that wonderful opportunity.
Thank you, Sheila, for your affirmation of seeing the grace and joy in connecting—that’s what fuels me and shines light on my living each day as fully as I know how.
xoxo
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