WRITE 28 DAYS: MEDITATION RESPONSES – Day 1: Breath

I’m participating in Sharon Salzberg’s 28-Day Real Happiness Meditation Challenge again this year, and my plan for this blog series is to write a poem or reflection on each day’s practice. You can find all the responses on the landing page.

Aeroplankton

Soup, untasted, uncontained, 
swirling above our busy heads 
like an airy ocean, star-seeking, salted 
with a scattering of the living 
and the dead, cells of what once 
was, what lies mouldering, 
residue of what is, hosts of kiting spiders 
trailing silk, a glimmer of freewheeling ants and flies 
and beetle’s wings, goldenrod seeds and pollen flash, 
algae loosed and moss thickening this wind-wild 
suspension, dust of a desert, long ago, mingling 
with the sea’s heady spray, fungal spores 
hosting ice and water and the rest 
of the sundered stirring, 

stirring, quickening our tethered bodies 
as we take it in, let it go, 
almost remember the breath of this weather, 
these relics, our dust.   

© MW 1 Feb 2023

Featured image: Aeroplankton photographed in Meung-sur-Loire, above the river Loire (France). Source: WikiCommons.