The Reclaiming of Breath

It is time to breathe again.
to understand that the worst has happened
again and that is still for all its pain

It is not as bad as the worst you have experienced
already. It is time to remember those times where
life and love came just so close to breaking you,
that years spent teetering on the intense edge
of feelings that were, then and now, too much.

Of course, now you know.
They were not. Too much that is.
Only enough of you broke,
enough to leave some gnarly scars,
enough of you that you were forced
to fill in the blanks the broken places left gaping,
Filling them with something …., something if not entirely new,
certainly different. You learned to breathe.

And here you are breathing again:
not that day-to-day stuff we call breathing.
No, something deeper. Slower.
more mindful, each breath a promise
that there is more. And you are more.
More than a survivor. To let your pain
remake you. Life as art. Pain as art.
It’s a thing, evidently.

Breathe in. Breathe Out. Again.
Slow. Feeling it.
Down to the diaphragm. Again.
So deep, the muscles hurt.

This is where healing begins,
in the acceptance of pain,
the remembrance that you have survived worse,
and that now, as then,
life began with the reclaiming of breath.

About this poem.

Things happen in our lives, and mine has been no exception, that knock us off our path. It is distressful, often breaks us, at least for a time; forces us to rethink, recalibrate our emotions, and perhaps become someone at least partially new. So you can apply this poem to any breaking event – love, shattered faith, loss, or even the latest election cycle. All of them. Poetry is, after all, never about one thing.

For me at least, meditation, centered on breathing has been a part of my path back for 20 years.

The picture was taken at Olana, the home of Fredrick Edwin Church, one of the founders of the Hudson River School of painting. Still Life vignettes calm me and I am always taking pictures of them, wherever I go.

Be well. Travel wisely,

Tom