I’m wallowing in air,
real breath,
not a medicated haze
….a leaning back in the swing,
flip flops fluttering to the ground below,
feet dangling free against turquoise sky,
swooping through cool wind gathering hair,
backwards swoosh gathering me
up,  up,  up
until the heavens catch me,
pause
and release to free fall back into flight
kind of breath!

the kind caught on beaches,
and biking downhill
and on open roads with the windows rolled down
and the radio turned up loud

~a  school’s out for the summer kind of breath!

After all these years of gasped prayer and shaky tears,
tight chest heaving 0ut “help!”
while Dr.s shrugged helpless over asthma like this,
another nutritionist pushed a plain brown bottle across her desk
“I just learned about this.  I’d like you to try.  My treat.”
an ordinary miracle,
Albizia complex

While fear climbed up my spine
about another allergic reaction to yet another concoction
and the whole weary business of digging out
from another storm on my lungs

  hope whistled light to trust and try again,
and I nibbled off the end of the first loamy tablet
before I  even started the car
and it tasted like earth
(from the daisy family,  wouldn’t you know)
and my lungs smiled shyly as I drove

and for days now I’m feeling knots worked open,
a coming untangled
and undone with relief,
laughing and crying glad thanks
for generous air enough

and

 the whole possibility that my body will drink
again and again these great bountiful gulps of breath
lifts and billows beneath me
and my soul feels the motion of wind on a swing,
high on the sweet wild air.