Giving up your holy spirit every day
in slow decay of water to a thirsty sky,
your lake-blue rises, blending into higher blue.
Breathe in
the snow-topped peaks
breathe out
your light,
breathe in
the heat,
breathe out
your cooling breeze,
breathe in
exhausted air
breathe out
your mist.
This year, your piers are far away from shore. This year,
your clouds of living dust-motes, thirsty, fail to form.
This year, your forests vanish into fire,
Breathe in
the smoke,
breathe out,
breathe out,
breathe out
your life.
—
Joyce Schmid’s poems appear in New Ohio Review, The Hudson Review, Passager, Literary Imagination, and other journals and anthologies. A chapbook, Natural Science, is forthcoming from Glass Lyre Press.
