Saturday, July 07, 2012

Respiro, inspiro

Today--a day when I wish were Emily Dickenson, or was acquainted with her muse, or even better, had her craft in my own fingertips.

After days of oppressive heat that settled in the pores of arms and legs and wrapped bodies like mummies, closed in and fuming, there was a breeze this morning. I noticed it at midday, sitting outside stirring the ice in my plastic glass with my straw. The air was hot, but it was moving, going somewhere, past the trees, not bothering with bodies or walls, going onward. Still hot, but we were not pinned to our seats by warming degrees so high they defied records.

It is early evening now, and the breeze is cooling the air, the ground, the houses and the cars and the street. From time to time it swirls and grows into a wind, stronger with life of its own, but then it settles back down to take a rest. It will will find more energy in the coming dark and blow into a storm when I am safe under my own roof. Now robins and sparrows are twittering abstractions in the tops of the trees. Branches move with the gentle energy of the air.

Respiro, inspiro. Breathe. Inspire.

Oh, if I were Emily I could distill all this down into eight, or even four perfect metered lines of six or eight syllables, cryptic yet clear to those who crack the code. A single moving, changing image that inspires, that breathes with life.