"-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> Frigg | Spring/Summer 2023 | Deep Breathing Exercise | Michael T. Young
artwork for Michael T. Young's poem Deep Breathing Exercise

Deep Breathing Exercise
Michael T. Young

With each breath, I strive to inhale the vastness,
             not to the mere bottom of the bronchioles,
but down to the riverbeds,
             where the landscape and I merge
into the shuttle weave of a swift
             mending the surface of a lake.
I want to come together
             where his wings thread its waves,
and wind ties itself into knots,
             and what is held is not breath exactly
but the pause before a new connection
             binds earth and sky.
I want to draw these things in rings
             over the water where lovers and ducks
have waded out, circling each other,
             their strokes stirring to the depths
as expanding reflections
             silk the reach through overhanging trees,
pass through passing clouds
             that break into blue,
rippling clarities that endlessly exhale.



Michael T. Young’s Comments

When I was a teenager, I meditated, and focused breathing was central to those meditations. A sense of my connection to everything often resulted from the tranquility in those meditations. “Deep Breathing Exercise” revisits that sense of connection, that we are not just individual beings breathing but are the universe breathing.

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Frigg: A Magazine of Fiction and Poetry | Issue 61 | Spring/Summer 2023