by jim perkinson, 04.19.2020, St. Peter’s Episcopal Church (Detroit, MI)

we worry now
about breath
where it has been
whose kiss it carries and whose
nostril-curl in zephyr-spins
of night or day or twirling
door-gush rushing to the street
and we now see how primal
is the air of earth, the river
whence we cruise and where
we move, like fish-in-flow or
a swallow on the wing at dusk—we,
feet on dust, head up-thrust and strolling
or still-standing like a tree, are traversed
by shared gasps of eddy or drafts and swirls of our real gift-economy participation . . .
inspiration aspiration exhalation
wind as commons in the lung,
ingress of every green-sliced puff
of blade of grass, or oak-bough glade
and shade of apple-bloom or gloom
of forest dark, where noon is soft
as moon on lake and single call of loon
then uptake of badger-grin and
grizzly-grunt or carp-gulp breaking
sun-glint on swiftly closing surface
eclipsing fin and eye, there is no place
to hide from the spirit-tide washing
swift and silent from continent to continent, across the globe-girth of ocean-surf, respirating yesterday’s thought to cloud- height bound for kiting gust across mountain
pass and down to marsh-caress and corn-tassel-tickle before alighting once again on tongue and sinus whether i would
or you could wish it naught, we are quite invaded by every inhaled hint of what glides stranded as our helix-codes, questing for abode and repetition, the ever-transpiring
mode of our shared heritage, for good or ill, and for disciples gathered under lock and key in terror before the powers’ investigation, as ancient as a galilean dream of teeming crops or breaking nets,
a sudden wisp and bodily condensation
in the midst, hailing the shocked gasp with peace and mission, breathing animation on the wide-eyed consternation, commissioning release, like a second chance and a canceled debt, and even late-arriving thomas, finger on the pulse, and eyeball maced with truth, can only suck in the offered gift—a breath, as ordinary as your own affirmed as never-yet contained within a tomb, but raised and zoomed like every other since a one-celled novelty first exhaled the streaming gas calliope that still clings across the planet, whether cooled in ice or crashed with comet
pulsing with the heart-thrust of
every sentient life-quest since—
an air-curl of unfurling destiny that
we bible-thump as resurrection-jump
like jesus was somehow defying gravity
he rose and offered the oldest intimacy
we know that already has drafted us
in mystery and ever shall,
though our name change and our cells
rearrange yet one more time on this wing
of magic incantation we call earth:
jesus rose and breathed and still does through all that was and is and will be
and so shall we.
so . . .breathe.