Exhalation

Breath is the bridge which connects life

to consciousness, which unites your

body to your thoughts. – Thich Nhat Hanh

My muses must have fled from me before my coffee fix, in the crash of afternoon, my pages white and naked, in clamour that comes from nothing, leaving me feeling foiled, unable to pen my poem. I opt instead for inertia, open windows bringing breezes from the west, sibilating stories of the sphere, wind that carries exhalation from peasants in the field, who groan while bending backs and picking rice; from mothers in their push to birth their babes, and the cries that come the moment

they emerge, cords cut, bottoms slapped with care; from orations from the senates of the world; the homilies of the holy; the prayers of all devout; from the schoolboy spouting love into the ears of his first crush; an alcoholic’s song of rote into a stumbling, crooked night; the death-bed gasps of the sick and grey in the seconds

before they die; from a waitress and her drag on cigarette,

in her too-short break

from servitude;

from all the creatures

of the forests

of the earth,

the hunters and their prey,

the yelps and screams

of the kill;

by the will

of currents, carried,

co-mingled in jet-

stream,

abating breath

that lightly ruffles

the adjacent

chimes and sheers.

Poetry, it heaves.

This

is poetry.

Andreas Gripp

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