Poetry: Getting Your Feet On The Ground

What if Chuck Berry had “No Particular Place to Go and Came to San Miguel? Would He Write a Song Like This?

GETTING YOUR FEET MORE ON THE GROUND

By Richard Adelman

Where are you going to place your feet

on this highly irregular street?

It’s hard to walk in San Miguel

from the look of the streets that’s easy to tell.

Getting your feet more on the ground

can be an experience very profound,

and learning to stand more fully erect

can create a very dramatic effect.

You will feel more in charge

as you take up a space sufficiently large.

Others won’t dare step on your toes,

for fear you’ll tell them where to go.

To be able to stand your very own ground, 

can result in a change that´s very profound.

in your relationship with the other,

even with someone who seeks to smother.

Being able to say your limit is here,

means you no longer have to fear,

If someone tries to get in your face,

you’ll vanquish him without a trace.

If you want to be able to feel the ground,

you gotta learn to slow yourself down

to feel through the soles of your own two feet,

the support of the surface underneath.

With your weight solidly balanced on your feet,

you’ll be able to walk almost any street,

even the streets of San Miguel,

which were designed like streets from hell.

Richard Adelman works with fall prevention in his Feldenkrais movement education practice and he hopes that these poems may prevent a few falls also.