Tag Archives: loss of breath

Woodwind

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Woodwind

Breath, down through my lifetime, if I dare to cogitate,
creates a varied story that I’m driven to relate.
Along with embouchure, it was a subject of debate
that, added to execution, served to determine fate
by moving me from first chair to second, then to third
in placement in the school band. I easily conceded
to yield my place as first chair, and so was superseded
by player after player who played the saxophone
more skillfully than I did. I had not a bone
to pick with them. I knew I had neither skill nor lungs
to insure my placement in the upper rungs
of our school band’s placement. I really didn’t care
if I manned third or second or the first-ranked chair.

Tobacco, then pneumonia later played a hand
in lessening my lung power long after the school band
had retreated into history and a guitar took the place
of an instrument requiring both my breath and face
to execute its glories. And so my prowess lingers
longer now that it requires simply arms and fingers.
Meanwhile, my breath is used up by necessary things.
It talks and sighs and whistles and laughs and coughs and sings.
Even with more talent, it’s clear I’ve not enough of it
to put my mouth upon a reed and puff and puff and puff on it.
I’m glad I had no talent, for it would mean my death
if I had any other thing using up my breath!!!

Prompt words today are pneumonia, tobacco, embouchure, cogitate and empty.

Nope!!!

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img_1305This really is the number of meds that are keeping me breathing right now.

Nope!!!

Okay, readers, here’s the dope.
Though desolation might reach and grope,
put in my path those bars of soap,
in depressed times, provide the rope,
I choose instead to fight and cope.
I refuse to be a misanthrope.
I really have no cause to mope,
for as long as there is breath, there’s hope.

Background info that I couldn’t fit in without really stretching it to fit in my remaining rhyme words of “ope, lope, Pope and taupe,” is that last night I was taken by ambulance for a night’s stay in the emergency room of the local Green Cross. I started having asthma attacks in the afternoon and by evening I just couldn’t breathe even with the inhalers.  None of my friends were home so finally I called a close neighbor who luckily had a sister who is both an asthma victim and a nurse. She got me calmed down and breathing through the inhaler and they went back home to have dinner, saying they’d come back to stay with me afterwards.  I tried to call a few more friends, but again, none were home, and I had another attack.  Luckily, the phone rang and it was Chris seeing how I was.  I could just gasp “Help!”  They were there in two minutes, called an ambulance, and since they could not get me to breathe without the oxygen, they took me to the hospital for the night.  Twelve hours of oxygen later, plus visits by two doctors, an injection and 5 more bottles of medicine, I’m back home with an oxygen machine I bought, looking for a portable one that doesn’t cost $5,000—what they cost here in Mexico— or $3500—what the model I’d like costs in the states. Never have I been so thankful for the breath of life!

The prompt today is mope.

Inhale, Exhale (Travel Theme Photo Challenge: Breathe)

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INHALE, EXHALE!

(An enlarged view of all photos may be seen by clicking on the first photo.)

https://wheresmybackpack.com/2016/05/14/travel-theme-breathe/

After Fifteen Years

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DSCN0916


(If you are viewing this in the Reader, poem will not be formatted correctly.  Please click on the blog title above the photo to view this post from my blog where it will be in the correct shape.)

After 15 Years

Your memory                                                   cuts so sharply
through my dream’s beginning that I wake,
gasping like a fish on the sand
left by some fisherman
too intent upon his next catch
to end it cleanly.

In its tight skin,
I gasp for air,
rise as it cannot rise
and like you cannot rise
out to that night sea air
which is the only coolness
in a month of burned days.

My memory, curving round,
pulls in the memory of you
like gills seeking to understand
the waterless air.

Landed by some bigger fisherman
whose bait you couldn’t resist,
“Oh,” you said, just “Oh,”
before you took the hook,
slipping from my grasp
as I held on, held on,
let go.

Breath

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In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Fright Night.” What’s the thing you’re most scared to do? What would it take to get you to do it?

Breath

Although it feels to me that my main fear is fear of death,
I think what I really fear is the loss of breath.
For when I have night panics that drive me bolt upright,
it isn’t so much fear of darkness brought on by the night,
as it is my fear of something  cutting off my air.
It  is thoughts of smothering that I cannot bear.

The very thing that makes me fight the snorkel mask and rise
above alluring water worlds for a view of skies
(and all the breaths they bring with them–breaths more easily won
when not underwater, but out here in the sun)
is what causes fear of death––that last futile grasp
to hold on to all of life with one final gasp.

Life is so incredible, I don’t want it to end;
for I have no idea at all what’s waiting round the bend.
At times a flash of memory reveals a bygone life
filled with superstition, violence and strife.
If that is what’s in front of me in a new incarnation,
I’d like to miss out on that life and take a small vacation

from all the karma has in store if my next life is worse,
with no time for leisure––no time for blogs or verse––
then oblivion may not be the worst thing that could be.
Perhaps then I could just accept that there will be no me.
Give in to fate and realize I’m just a part of all.
that recycles and recycles–guided by death’s call.