Poetry

An Experiment in Survival Tactics

Take a breath under water, there,
take it, as if it is a living thing, a pulse.
Hold it in your hand and examine it.
Turn it over, hold it up to the light
and watch the world through it,
watch the day change color, uneasy,
black to gray to white and black again.
Oh, I know, time is no longer the failure
to act, but part of the act of action.
If only you knew which breath to take,
that one, or that. As if by choosing
you could change the way of living it,
beyond the words. Even beyond that far
swath of another soul, beckoning.
     If you turn your body toward the sky
you can breathe under water,
but in the moonlight every step you take
leads to a garden of stones.