What breath have you been holding onto?
Rise from your chair, your bed,
and let it go,
that it might float behind and fall in fragments.
The breath that is drawn from heaven,
that is our daily oxygen,
does not bring with it any encumbrances.
If your chest is heavy, weighted as a stone,
perhaps it is simply breath stored,
you are holding on to for too long.
So rise, turn,
and if you are dizzy, fall.
Perhaps you are just being spun that
everything might settle again clearer.
Trust in heaven’s discerning
of what it is you need, and what you don’t.
And then let the breath that lingers,
go
in a rustle of leaves
that land where they will,
in a burst of spring breeze
that catches the apple blossom.
What breath that is exhaled
is not returned back into the
storehouse of everything.
That it might come around again,
refreshed in another season.
Ana Lisa de Jong
Living Tree Poetry
March 2021
Living Tree Poetry 