This Magnificent Breath
Atone for them. They don’t need punishment, they need a blanket, a fireplace and a cup of tea.
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How magnificent, this breath.
The crest and the plateau and the valley,
the temperature change.
The whiskeys and the way
every Celt speaks of
landscape, and waxes poetic but
knows life through taste.
Eventually, you’ve got to taste it.
It can’t all stay understood.
It must be lived.
No grandfather can usher you in.
No textbook can contain
this magnificent breath.
The older I get, the more I suspect that
art and beauty change my life because
they do not need a reason.
They are alive without a why,
and who needs it? The why. I know
that the mind is a machine, but underneath?
Mycelium. A French baguette
in a Canadian bakery. Gluten-free pasta.
Border patrol and boys with yellow fingernails.
Amphetamines. Dancing, naked, to Bloodbank
and pet names and calling someone “babe”
like it’s the first time you’ve taken off
your training wheels.
Balance.
It has taken two years to trust that
I don’t have to keep looking over my shoulder
to make sure some hand out there
is still holding my seat, or feet:
running alongside my bike.
Pay attention.
The shapes of crosses are the shapes of tension.
Can you become one?
At this point, where the beams meet,
what I Am seeking is seeking me —
and any time Jesus seems to speak,
He is not filled with the jealousy that
makes for tyrants. He just bends his knee and
sings, “I Am, too. We
are the eye of these storms,
and the skies that house their rage.
Atone for them. They don’t need punishment,
they need a blanket, a fireplace and a cup of tea.
You have the authority to calm the seas
or treat them like sidewalks.
Take your magnificent breath.”