Breathing In...
By: Daniel E. Kramer
Breathing in I smell the spring flowers as they wade into the breaking dawn of the season. Bud break has its potency for me. A mix of beauty and unique scent, plus the closed nostril effect. Allergic to the bounty I have become over the years. I am fortunate though, and I don’t blame or hate these ragweeds and masters of pollen.
Their sexual practices offend my senses, all the while stimulating the periphery, making for a double-sided sword that I deal with both carefully and without holding back. I still enter the realm of these gorgeous flowering gems, knowing that proximity may lead to reduced air intake, stinging eyes, and watery nose, but the nearsighted ability to view and enjoy guides my wants and desires. If I can only make it through this waning time of color and beauty, if I can only hold on a bit longer the fruits will ripen, the seeds will replant, and the future will come. There will someday be a moment when sneezing is done, complete and calm, and only the feast will remain.
Breathing in I hold my breath today. Ten, twenty, thirty seconds goes by, and I know I am only here due to the oxygen that remains. Can I hold my breath forever? Imaging that I am a fish with gills, or an inorganic being, I wish to be released to explore the underworlds below. Regrettably, there is no way to transform my being, or is there?
The sun perfects things, taking away coldness, chill, and vitamin D deficiencies. Photosynthesizing the world over I see the past defined in spores, then needles, then flowers, and on to us. How did we come into this body? To be human is a journey, a trek of billions of years, maybe even trillions if the big bang was just one of many.
So how special are we? Are we the culmination of all time and space, destined then to die out and become extinct, like all other things before? Are we the blip on the windshield, the bloody spot left on the blanket, the single outcome of chance? Are we nothing more than the one egg that falls from the nest, showing such potential until we no longer do?
We are all here together waiting, you, me, the pollen, the allergic reactions, the sun, the stars, the moon, trees, spores, pines, dogs, mice, bees and fruit; all of it. Considering this, I guess I will just sit here in the sun, eating peanuts, watching my kids carve knives and spears out of dead branches, my dogs sleeping lazily, and take a few more breaths while I still have them to take.
I will wait until the fruit is ripe, and I will wait until it is time for it to drop from the tree.
