My breath joins a wind
full of the scent of hyacinth
dusting the fence posts, then
sweeps away dandelion spores,
scattering them
over the neighboring yards.
A deeper part of me
wanders with these diffusions,
seeds the spaces
framed in shadows, even the crevices
in brick under vine-encrusted facades,
even windows thumped in the light.
It’s an idea of freedom
before there is root and stem,
before someone enters the room.
Like wind, my breath passes,
trailing in its nearness
a loss of something I’m still
trying to name. Like my breath,
wind sometimes hushes the birds,
falls still in mid-phrase, and what is held
in the tufts of the butterfly bush
stirs as the air stirs in that interlude
before a flock bursts into flight.