Ocean Wind

Breezes fresh off the ocean

Cleanse my breath

Bringing with them a faint whiff of pineapple

Hints of cinnamon and spices

Only an echo of killing field turmoil

A guilty sniff of garbage gyre

If there is radioactive particulate matter still lingering from Fukushima

I don’t want to know

I’d prefer to think that evaporation and condensation

Across thousands of miles of ocean

Has restored innocence to the wind

But this wind doesn’t blush anymore

Having been stripped and torn asunder too many times to tell

I share each breath with all of humanity

All creatures

All living things

Breathing in

Breathing out

Recycling this invisible presence

Neither clean nor original but vital

So I fill my lungs with the belches and farts

Of a busy world

I breathe the last heavy sigh of nameless saints

Swallow the screams of the terrified

Smell fragrances of the forgotten rotting

Take in the essence of timeless past

Formless future

Exhaling into tomorrow

Invisibly connected to forever

 

 

David Trudel   ©  2013