In tai chi, they say,
walking is simply
perpetual falling.

The young instructor
teaches this to a room
of beginners,

all of us in the older adult
category upstairs in a historic
house-turned-library.

So much accumulated wisdom
embedded in these walls, on
the shelves, in every exhale.

We elders watch this young man
teaching us how to breathe,
how to move so, so slowly,

take a single step with infinite
care—if not grace—wobble
but not tip, not fall,

beginning to engage in
an ancient dance that we
somehow already know

as he teases it out of us
one flowing movement
at a time.