Tag Archives: breath

Time Travel: katauta

What is this thing life?
Even stuck still in amber
the passage of time remains.

What use is living?
Even the largest river
remembers the breeze touching.

What is this thing life?
Keeping track of each minute
wastes yet another minute.

30 MAR 2017

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Sing the Song: georgics

First off, it always starts with breath.
That sounds so simple, but in fact
so many who would stretch their speech
against set pitches set in time
forget to breathe – at least, to breathe
as if the air were precious fuel.

Second, you must know the text.
To even blunder through, one must
engage the phrase, not word by word,
but in whole thoughts. Communication
is goal here, after all.
You’re not just throwing random sounds
out in the void; it’s what you say
as much, if not more, that saying it.

Third, it comes up from the ground:
the song comes from the toes, and then
it rises through the body.
Let it rumble all along your spine;
it gathers power as it goes.
Don’t start too high – it will get caught
and tangled up there in your throat.

Again, just breathe and let it out;
and watch it as it leaves your mouth.
You can’t look down or you will lose
the thread that ties the sound to you
and to the listener.

22 MAR 2017

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Useless Feet: englyn lleddfbroest

Our life and death for a while leave
some tiny mark on the earth,
a minute’s trace of spent breath
before we repose in death.

In that lifetime, so fleeting,
what we think we truly need
escapes from us at such speed
we cry out at useless feet.

08 MAR 2017

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A Song

My ears already hear the morning lark.
Listening far beyond my sight I have begun.
So we absorb what we seem to not touch;
it vibrates us, even from a distance –

and fills us, even if we do not know it,
with something live, which, until sensing it,
we never are; the music moves us on
answering our own song…
but what we hear is the breath of the whole world.

After A Walk by Rainer Maria Rilke

8 APR 2014

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The Old Guitar: a love song

They say you are inanimate,
but I believe they lie.
The world is made of tiny stuff
that never quite stands still;
and as your presence here suggests,
this world is where you’re from.

They say you have no feelings,
but just who are they to know?
Each sound creates endless vibrations
that may never end;
and as they reach you, you may change
despite no outward sign.

They say you are an object,
without soul, but they are wrong.
Because a thing eludes detection
doesn’t prove it gone;
and anyone who hears your voice,
and listens, understands.

They say you once were living,
but are now dead. They are fools!
For life is one long single thread,
split up by space and time;
we may be separate for now,
but only for a while.

They say you are inanimate,
and do not breathe! For shame!
Without you there is no inhale
or exhale. You are the air;
together, we create the songs
that fuel the universe.

07 APR 2014

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I wonder if like days

I wonder if, like days that start to shorten
and slowly cede their hours to the dark,
each hour’s breath becomes much more important,
because it marks the dying of a spark;

or if, because we pay it no attention
it simply slips away into the mist,
and suddenly, as if without a warning,
is gone, and it (and we) cease to exist.

I wonder if, in those last fleeting seconds,
what breathes at last becomes more self-aware;
and as its edges slip off into nothing
concedes there is so much more nothing there,

and if that nothing we mistake for something
(because despite the truth, we wish it so),
is only to ourselves of such importance
because we can control its letting go.

I wonder if, like some fire’s dying embers
that turn to ash extinguished on the wind,
what we think so important is remembered
beyond what we, conceited, call the end.

11 NOV 2013

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New Day: a choka

A new day is born:
look, how the world starts again;
its still form awakes
from an evening’s slumber
and shakes the sleep from its eyes.

In the quiet hours
before its hum becomes roar,
the whole of life breathes:
a low, gentle rush of air
that fills creation anew.

28 APR 2011

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