The Inhale
Speak of the moment now,
Remind me of that hour, that minute
That breathless second of which I cannot comprehend.
In the fool’s errand of metaphor I tripped and tumbled
As the winds whispered, sighed, and at last unbound me,
Taking me up in their gentle teeth,
Gnawing my heart with their wisdom.
And thus, for that moment, I ceased to be,
Sinking then into the sun’s everglow
as the world’s wordless babble fell to naught.
Can I express the promise of the sky,
The whispers of scaled claws on rock,
And light’s own sky-gold through the pines?
The wind’s ethereal sigh within my lungs?
The time without time when an unspoiled flame
First was lit,
Wrapped in a fractal of sublimity, sorrow, and sun,
A brief second, a minute, an hour
When the sounds of Birds and Bats were null.
Seconds, minutes, hours passed,
And once again
Out from the teeth I stepped.
Everglow fades, speech here returns.
The moment long gone as sublimity rots
In the stale steel drone of what must be here and today.
A second moment.
And yet, as it was then it is now,
Even cloaked in the shackles of a second time,
A time of rattling codes and bones made of ice,
Even there, even now,
the breath inhaled of sunlight and sorrow,
The sightless sound of the whispering wind,
Through the pines and promises,
As the time stops once more
And the whispers speak in the tongue of gold fire
Of what could be
What will be,
The beckoning breath of becoming
Returns once again to my lungs.