A Course in Miracles

by Patricia Ace

My cousin is taking a course in miracles.
She rises at five to the cries of the birds,
the tropical light bleaching the room
where she sleeps alone; she prefers it that way,
lovers kept long–distance, on call.
A cold shower in the morning is the hardest thing you’ll do all day.

On the terrace of her eyrie in Maraval,
after morning yoga, she moves easy as a tiger,
sips coconut water bought road–side from her private supplier.
At the shrine of giant Hanuman she squats in the shade
sucking watermelon, cool and crêpey on her tongue.
Women should take Savasana at least three times in 24 hours.

Driving her SUV through the slums of Port of Spain
she recites the Hindu parable of the twilit serpent
revealed as coiled–up rope. She’s seen bodies
burned on pyres, heard their skulls go pop.
But death doesn’t scare her. She quotes the Bhagavad Gita:
the unreal has no being, my love, the real never ceases to be.