7/19/2023

My yoga instructor always says

to let to let thoughts pass

without judgement. She says this

in a variety of different ways.

Tonight, she said it like this:

Imagine your thoughts

are cars passing on the road.

Notice them, and let them go.

Here is the thing.

For the past three weeks,

I’ve been dealing with a dog

that barks, whines, and lunges

at every car that moves

past her field of vision.

Today, in particular, she chased the mailman.

As if she were a cartoon character.

As if she got her hands on the Sunday Funnies

in the newspaper. She read somewhere

that this is what dogs do.

I wonder what emotion

that mailman struck for her

that she felt the need not to let him pass by.

Was it hunger? Happiness? Envy or amusement?

Whatever it was must’ve been

uncontrollable.

Uncontrollable emotions are not a foreign tongue to me.

I find myself thinking this dog and I

must be a match made in car-chasing heaven.