By Al Maginnes
First story: separation. Little songs navigating waves of air. Clouds
redundant
in their mortality and reformation. Consider that a kind of proof.
The coffee maker spits into action. A woman standing in front
of an open window breathes in all of creation her lungs can grab.
Then lets go. Thirty two floors below, a man holds a sign
stating his plight in as few words as he can manage. His breath rumbles
against decades of cigarettes, the chemical weapons of his youth.
If we have a sacred moment, it is this one. Or the next. As long
as we have a body to offer the world. This breath, then the next,
are how we control this swimming through time, element man can claim
no control over as it pours past us, ruthlessly becoming dead skin,
elements run amok, vanishing into fire and air, those things we call
eternal though they may last no longer than a story waiting
to be told again.
__
Al Maginnes has published fourteen collections of poetry, most recently Fellow Survivors: New and Selected Poems (Redhawk Publications 2023). After more than thirty years of teaching, he is retired and lives in Raleigh, NC with his family.