A Southward Tide

You whisper under breath
that life again begins to pass,
the image flickers like Muybridge’s horse.

And the weight that brought you born to air,
the weight that taught you how to breathe,
stops breath again.

You start to pass.

The ticks of time of waiting stretch
and the waiting waits for you to fall
The waiting waits.
It’s what it does.

You wait with it for none to pass.

The flicker of the running horse
starts and stops in false pretense.
Because life begun, it never ends.
It never ends.

You wait with it
until the weight that brought you to this pass
lifts

and in the space breath left behind
the waiting stops.

[One of my first poems, 2006]