Poetry, Life, Death
Born Again From Breath to Breath
Star Poetry
Born again from breath to breath, our souls take flight against the nighttime canopy of stars.
Death again, it grips us tight. Breathe, we say. Remember night will fade to day and all we know, and all we are, will fray like scattered stardust, lost to time.
But breath, it binds us soul to flesh, a mesh of possibilities, not firmed or formed, but somewhere lost in arching rhymes of ages past and yet to be.
And so we breathe, because we can.
And every breath instills a sense of urgency. Time so short, a precious thing, slips past so quick we cannot know what portents hold to truth and which are lost to breaths long gone. They never lived. They never died.
And so we breathe. And then we fly amongst the stars, born again to fate unfurled upon the silk of spider webs. Glisten dewdrops. Glisten stars.
The patterns there, they are not ours to hold or keep but to release into the deep recess of equanimity, which is reborn, as life fades into darkened death and breath recedes for one last time.
Erika Burkhalter is a yogi, neurophilosopher, cat-mom, photographer, and lover of travel and nature, spreading her love and amazement for Mother Earth’s glories, one photo, poem or story at a time. (MS Neuropsychology, MA Yoga Studies).
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Photos and story ©Erika Burkhalter. All rights reserved.
This poem is dedicated to Cynthia, whom I will love forever and will always think of as wearing “a gown of stars” and having the glow of moonbeams upon her brow. Thank you for being my Mamacita.
