Our breath–our connection to the earth

I think about breath often–but this week I’ve been thinking of it in a slightly different way. Welcome to my first post for National Poetry Month. If you’d like to see the roundup from the Kidlitosphere for this month, you can find it here (and it’s not too late to add something–just let me know).

It’ been a tough year!

My plan for NPM was to write poetry about Mother Earth–I didn’t say how many poems, but I plan to work on them every day.

This week, however, brought more sadness. A 15-year-old who had been in my class when she was three, died of cancer on Thursday. She’d been ill for a year and a half but had seemed to be doing better for a while. I’m not ready to write about her yet, but I’ve been thinking a lot, and, as I said, about breath. Especially about those first and last breaths we take–that begin and end our life on earth.

Poems about breath

Here are two poems that I come back to when I need to focus on my breath. I use the first one often–and have for many years–

Breathing in, I calm body and mind
Breathing out, I smile.
Dwelling in the present moment,
I know it is the only moment.
--Thich Nahn Hahn

This next one I first learned when I was doing my Waldorf teacher training. We used it in our eurythmy class to think about expansion and contraction. It’s another one I come back to often–

In breathing grace may twofold be,
We breathe air in, we set it free.
The in-breath binds,
The out unwinds,
And thus with marvels life entwines.
Then thanks to God when we are pressed,
And thank Him when he gives us rest.
--Goethe

Evening by Rainer Maria Rilke

I came across this poem in my poetic meanderings on the web. It seemed to capture a lot of how I was feeling. The last stanza talks about the stone and star in us.

Evening by Rainer Maria Rilke

The sky puts on the darkening blue coat
held for it by a row of ancient trees;

...Read the rest here...


and leave you (inexpressibly to unravel)
your life, with its immensity and fear,
so that, now bounded, now immeasurable,
it is alternately stone in you and star.


Translated by Stephen Mitchell

A diamante poem about stone and star

Rilke’s poem made me think about death and how when we die, the stone separates from the star. I’m not sure if it’s completely done, but here it is so far. (I’m working on a longer poem about breath and earth, but it’s not done enough to share yet–like me, it feels pretty raw). This one is a different take on the usual diamante, although the basic form is the same. You can read more about the diamante form here.

Stone
crystalline, solid
inhales, yields, lives
wonder, laughter, music, pain
 exhales, separates, transforms
radiant, unbounded
Star