They say some part of every breath
carries a tiny piece of the very air
the Christ breathed, or the Buddha,
Gandhi, Mohammed, maybe,
crystallizing in our lungs
piece by piece, until time enters
our blood, feeding the cells in our fingertips.
The world dances there, just out of reach,
spinning past, images impressed on images,
leaves on leaves on rain gray skies,
the faces of people reduced to shadows,
their hands blended into each other.
Everything happens outside our skin.
You might say that we are blind and stumbling.
There is nothing we can do about time;
it goes its own way.
William Alton has been writing for nearly twenty-five years, recently publishing work in The Poet’s Canvas, Red River Review, The Oklahoma Review, Whalelane and Amarillo Bay. Currently, he lives in Forest Grove, Oregon with my wife and three sons.