Inhalers
Created for Chuck one day before the anniversary of his birth.
“When her doctor took her bandages off and led her into the garden,
the girl who was no longer blind saw “the tree with the lights in it.” It
was for this tree I searched through the peach orchards of summer, in
the forests of fall and down winter and spring for years. Then one day
I was walking along Tinker creek and thinking of nothing at all and I
saw the tree with the lights in it. I saw the backyard cedar where the
mourning doves roost charged and transfigured, each cell buzzing with
flame. I stood on the grass with the lights in it, grass that was wholly fire,
utterly focused and utterly dreamed. It was less like seeing than like being
for the first time see, knocked breathless by a powerful glance. The flood
of fire abated, but I’m still spending the power. Gradually the lights went
out in the cedar, the colors died, the cells un-flamed and disappeared. I
was still ringing. I had been my whole life a bell and never knew it until at
that moment I was lifted and struck. I have since only very rarely seen the
tree with the lights in it. The vision comes and goes, mostly goes, but I live
for it, for the moment the mountains open and a new light roars in spate
through the crack, and the mountains slam.” ~ Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
First, breathe in. Breathe my love in. Breathe it from
My mouth or from my heart. You choose. Breathe out,
But only if you must. Breathe in the rhumb
Of my devotion to your depths. Breathe doubt
About the love of others, but not mine.
Breathe in with your inhaler for a cure
Of breathing ills, of tightness, but the line
Of flight my soul makes through your sphere is sure
As compasses have ever been. Climb up
A tree, but take me with you to its heights.
Hold auricles and ventricles, both. Cup
Mine in your callused palm. The tree with lights
In it is what we’ll make together. Breathe,
And out will come two shining loves which seethe.