After Pilates

I come home with my head full
of strange thoughts: the secret beauty
of the word ‘No’: is it because my body
failed to do an exercise named after a swan?

I think now, were I in command, I would give
to my grown children a perfect lecture
on the dark brilliance inside the ‘No’
I often resisted or couched in soft terms

instead of allowing it to shine and balance
as my body today used a pulley
to slowly lift and restore the numbered vertebrae
from neck to tail bone as I curled and uncurled.