inspired by Maya Stein’s 10-line poem form
What if, in this moment, every person on earth thinks of someone who makes us feel cherished, known, safe? What if we let ourselves linger in this moment of connection? What might happen inside each body? What might happen in the world as in unison our breaths begin to even and slow? Would the pulsing of our hearts begin to synch, the way heart cells in a petri dish come to keep time with each other? What is earth if not a great experiment in which we are all both observer and observed? How long could it last, this rhythmic communion between jailor and prisoner, oppressor and oppressed, between fighter and fighter, maker and destroyer, parent and child, liar and believer, all of us thinking of love? Foolish, perhaps, to imagine such impossible moments. But more foolish not to imagine such things. Even now, I’m thinking of someone. It feels like the moon is inside me.
Posts Tagged ‘breath’
A Great Shining
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged breath, connection, impossible dream, love, moon, peace on January 23, 2026| 1 Comment »
One Deepening Connection
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged breath, meditation, mindfulness on December 27, 2024| 2 Comments »
each breath
a sanctuary
I carry with me
Consecration
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged altar, breath, sacred, song on October 29, 2024| 11 Comments »
Even a song can be an altar,
a place to bring an offering—
as on this anxious day
when I can’t stop giving my heart
to love songs for the broken world.
And perhaps the breath, too, is an altar
on which the song is placed,
which would mean what is sacred
might be ever flowing through us,
a space where we might meet the divine.
To believe this doesn’t change
the song, but it changes everything
about the singer.
One Wondering About All that Goes Unheard
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged breath, night, sleep, temple on September 30, 2024| 4 Comments »
in the temple of night
the only audible benediction
sweet hymn of your breath
Blustery
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged breath, friendship, laughter, skiing, wind on March 3, 2024| 4 Comments »
for Corinne
Into the wind, the whipping
wind, the fierce, tempestuous,
mighty wind, we skied
as it pushed us and
bent us and slapped us
in a language made wholly
of howl—how alive we were,
laughing into the gale,
taking the storm into our lungs,
as if our breath could learn
its syntax, translate
its tongues of gust and squall
into wild, untamable mirth.
This is how we carried the storm
home in our bloodstream.
This is how, even now,
I feel it in my lips,
an uncontrollable, reckless smile.
In This Tender Silence
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged breath, consolation, friendship, grief, Rilke, silence, song on December 5, 2023| 2 Comments »
Offer your beauty always without calculation or defense.
—Rainer Maria Rilke, “Initial,” trans. Mark S. Burrows
Oh friend, it’s true. These dark hours
can crumple us, can press.
No way to escape their crush.
How merciless it can be,
the fist of grief,
how strong the squeeze,
how difficult to believe
we’ll survive.
Today, it is enough
to offer the world
only the simplest song—
the wordless, tuneless
song of beingness.
How beautiful it is,
this offering,
your breath against my cheek.
One Sacredness
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged altar, breath, wonder on November 10, 2023| 7 Comments »
an altar for wonder—
that small pause
before you speak
One Peacefulness
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged breath, new year, quiet on January 1, 2023| 8 Comments »
so quietly this new year
slips through midnight—
our breath the most precious of cheers
One Translation
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged breath, intimacy, love, silence on December 9, 2022| 2 Comments »
tide of your breath
the only poem
I need
The Mother Stands in the Doorway
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged breath, death, door, doorway, grief, loss, mother, silence, son on November 28, 2022| 12 Comments »
Because you are gone,
I will never again stand
in your doorway and listen
to the sound of your breath
as you sleep.
I can remember the way
it used to calm me—
the slow, even rhythm
that proved you were alive.
I used to laugh at myself.
As if you wouldn’t be alive.
How farfetched it felt,
the idea of your death.
Now, I hear the absence
of your breath everywhere—
everywhere is a doorway
where I find you are not.
And so I listen.
Sometimes it seems as if a silence
is breathing me,
and somehow, you live in that silence.
I don’t know how it works.
I only know that since you are gone,
sometimes listening feels like communion.
Sometimes when I am very quiet,
when there is no sound at all,
I hear you say nothing.
It’s everything.
Why I Take Deep Breaths
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged breath, breathing, grief, ocean, swimming on October 25, 2021| 6 Comments »
In this deep sea of grief,
it is hard to trust
my own buoyancy—
great waves break on me,
take my breath away,
I’m submerged by loss,
yet with so little effort
I rise. Just by being alive,
I rise. So I splutter.
So I’m graceless.
So I cannot see the shore.
But my friend reminds me,
there’s no way
that I can do this wrong.
So I let myself be carried
by currents unknown,
and each time I breathe—
I feel myself rise.
With so little effort,
I rise.
With the Stars All Around
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged breath, control, dream, letting go, life, sleep, trust on August 4, 2021| 5 Comments »
I wish you the peace of sleep,
your breath a canoe
that carries you
toward the next moment
without any need
for you to touch the oars.
How easily you arrive.
Oh, to trust the world like that—
trust you will be carried,
not just in sleep,
but in waking dreams,
trust no matter how high the waves,
the skiff of grace
has a seat for you.
And oh, to let go of the oars—
there is no steering
toward what comes next.
One Distant
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged breath, distance, love on August 1, 2021| Leave a Comment »
Identity Check
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged breath, dream, identity on June 6, 2021| 2 Comments »
When they asked
for my identity card
I looked in my purse
and found someone else’s.
And someone else’s.
And someone else’s.
But not mine.
But it’s me, I said.
I turned to my friends
so they could vouch for me,
but their word was not enough
to prove I was myself.
When I woke,
I leaned deeper
into my being, my breath
giving me what no card,
no word could do.
Even the flesh is a trick.
Oh, how the morning shines.
Pneumonia
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged body, breath, breathing, friendship, healing on April 28, 2020| 4 Comments »
—for A
And if I could, I would breathe for you.
I would inhale and exhale and hold
your breath for you. For you I would
sigh and rant, I would hack and pant,
I would be your lungs if I could. I would
ease this ache, I would carry this pain,
I would take away fear, I would be
the wind, the wild mesa wind,
the late April wind that blows change
into all we thought we knew
and rearranges the meaning of here.
No one could ever speak for you.
But I would breathe for you, friend.
Please, breathe, please keep breathing.
I need you to breathe for you, breathe
for me, please, friend. I wish I could
breathe for you, breathe for you.
Longing to Help
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged breath, breathing, connection, help on January 19, 2020| Leave a Comment »
The world enters
us as breath. We
return to it itself
as breath.
—Joseph Hutchison, “Comfort Food: Breath”
And so today, on a day
when I feel quite sure
I can’t give you anything,
not anything that really matters,
I give you my breath.
It’s more conceptual
than actual, perhaps,
though scientists say
that the molecules we breathe
have been redistributed
in our atmosphere
for a century or two.
I decide to breathe as if.
As if with each breath,
I connect to you. As if
with each breath, we
become just a little
more each other
one molecule at a time.
First Day Back on the Skate Ski Track
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged breath, moving, nordic skiing, poem, poetry, sitting on November 24, 2019| Leave a Comment »
Someday I’ll prefer to sit, to sit
and breathe and think or not think
and sit. But now, now when
the high mountains sing with snow
and the snowcat has groomed
a path through the nowhere of spruce
and the sky is a winnowing blue
that makes me unknow my name,
yes, now is the moment to slip deeper
into the self of myself
and snap skis on my feet
and let the day slap a smile on my face
that I could not possibly unsmile,
because for now, there is
this burn in the lungs, this wind
in the face, this spilling of laughter,
this joy in stride and push and glide,
this thrill in losing the breath.
Though We Focus So Much on Finding Our Voice
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged breath, poem, poetry, silence, singing, voice on March 29, 2018| Leave a Comment »
The sound of your breath is the quietest of songs.
—Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening
Maybe on that day
when we think, I forgot
to sing, that’s when we
realize that all day long
we harmonized with the world
in the quietest of songs—
joined in without any effort,
no striving at all,
and maybe that is the day
when we stop trying
to be heard and start
to notice the song
inside every other song,
the song inside every other being,
how perfectly in tune we are,
how easily we join—no conductor,
no notes, no beat, just one perfect
air. Maybe that’s the day we hear
the metronome of our own
steady heart and say to it,
I will trust you, feel the truth
of the song as it slips
from our lips, then
rushes in to fill us again.
One Entering
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged breath, poem, poetry on April 26, 2016| 1 Comment »
in the breath, a back door,
in the door, a lock, in the lock
a catch, in the catch, your name
One Attempt at Efficiency
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged breath, efficiency, poem, poetry on February 6, 2016| 1 Comment »
after an idea planted by Gabrielle Louise
it never works
this trying to exhale and inhale
at the same time