Breath

Is the thickness of the stars amidst their blackness

really the embrace of your cupped hands fused around us?

Maybe divine hands glitter

or perhaps you’re wearing evening gloves.

It looks like space to me.

You evade and tangle me

standing small on this tiny earth

Your breath brushes past my ear

when I have lost mine

and I lose mine

when I look at the sun, that dependable elixir

gazing life and glaring death

when I watch bees slung low with pollen

sharing whispers across blooms

when opaque eyes clear into galaxies

and the soul’s breadth sings

when a lofty peak bows its head

permits me to stand upon it

and behold

But is it not simply my own lost breath

blowing back in my face?

Breathe on me.

Take off those illusionist gloves

Let me see your palms patterning the sky

–