What’s on tap for Thursday? Push-ups, of course. We’re doing a ladder up with squats, back down with sit-ups:

1 push-up, 1 squat
2 push-ups, 2 squats
3 push-ups, 3 squats
… up to
7 push-ups, 7 squats

Then do 30 squats

7 push-ups, 7 sit-ups
6 push-ups, 6 sit-ups
5 push-ups, 5 sit-ups
…down to
1 push-up, 1 sit-up

Then do 30 sit-ups. For all the sit-ups, feel free to use your new hollow-body skills to do V-ups if the urge strikes you.

Here’s the amazing former U.S. Poet Laureate (and current Emory professor & Atlanta resident) Natasha Trethewey’s opening poem from her spectacular Native Guard collection:

Theories of Time and Space
Natasha Trethewey (2006)

You can get there from here, though
there’s no going home.

Everywhere you go will be somewhere
you’ve never been. Try this:

head south on Mississippi 49, one-
by-one mile markers ticking off

another minute of your life. Follow this
to its natural conclusion – dead end

at the coast, the pier at Gulfport where
riggings of shrimp boats are loose stitches

in a sky threatening rain. Cross over
the man-made beach, 26 miles of sand

dumped on the mangrove swamp – buried
terrain of the past. Bring only

what you must carry- time of memory,
its random blank pages. On the dock

where you board the boat for Ship Island,
someone will take your picture:

the photograph – who you were –
will be waiting when you return.