(…”breath of life…” – ancient Hawaiian word)
In the wisdom of the Western World men erected statues
in materials and forms so muscled and marbled they chilled
the chambers wherein they stood For centuries,
no paintings were hung of a laughing Jesus
His bearded portrait twisted in wrath, drooped in suffering,
looked ahead in a silence that never answered a prostrate form
Men handed other men a fist, both greeting and warning,
tested the gripping power of the other for a flaw
In 1959, on a desolate practice field in the inner city,
a coach screamed at a boy in one hundred degree heat
to close his mouth, breathe through his nostrils
until he fainted into the gravel and dust
His father yelled, “Cry baby!”, slapped his son again and again
until finally he stopped crying, forgot how to cry
A drill sergeant, howling in that boy’s ear, commanded him
to stick out his chest, hold in his gut, harden his ass
The boy learned to hold his breath just before he fired,
to swallow the urge to vomit standing over broken bodies,
to inhale and hold it, to look but not see, to count to ten
The wisdom of the Western World spoken in barber shops,
along wooden bars in dark taverns slopped with pots of chili,
pickled eggs, underarm stench, rancid beer breath
ordered him to hoard what he felt, not show his hand, firm his jaw,
not to flinch, not to let a smile grow too wide, not to laugh too loudly
In board rooms across from Wall Street hotshots
who got lucky once, who drew their cards from country clubs,
he learned to hold it in, to wait them out until an annual statement
gave him the extra chip he needed to cash them out
The wisdom of the Western World cautioned him in middle age
not to listen to the whispering of the sea when he swam
too far from shore, too deep to stand on his toes
in a place where boldly colored fish gathered around him,
lured him so far into the ocean his body stiffened, his inner voice
begged the ocean to “Heal me, dammit, heal me
Tell me what you know Show me how to live”
Once he learned the ocean had no words, that fish would always be silent,
he stopped thrashing, tore away his mask and was lifted by the sea