Intimate and Ultimate
So I’m thinking, after yesterday’s post, what else can I say about this new relationship I’ve discovered with the breath.
How about this:
from To Begin With, the Sweet Grass
by Mary Oliver
2.
Eat bread and understand comfort.
Drink water, and understand delight.
Visit the garden where the scarlet trumpets
are opening their bodies for the
hummingbirds
who are drinking the sweetness, who
are
thrillingly gluttonous.
For one thing leads to another.
Soon you will notice how stones shine
underfoot.
Eventually tides will be the only calendar
you believe in.
And someone’s face, whom you love,
will be as a star
both intimate and ultimate,
and you will be both heart-shaken and
respectful.
And you will hear the air itself, like a
beloved, whisper:
oh, let me, for a while longer, enter the
two
beautiful bodies of your lungs.