Breath By Breath

In the passenger seat of the car.

I look up to the gray billowing clouds and suddenly I am rising up to them
breathing in my lungs getting fuller and fuller and full

and I am there

and I feel the cool mist of those clouds on my cheeks and my lips and in my nostrils
and as I exhale I lower ever so slightly ever so slowly
with my inhale I am back up

and so it goes

buoying up and down and up
And I look below me and think how lucky I am to be above
out of that all
and then I

pause

Why? Why is that lucky?

I see the driver mindlessly following the road in front of him the trash on the side of the road the mother cradling her child the man yelling at the attendant the lovers embracing and I see it

all.

together.

And I exhale and float back down, intentionally
come into my body
and feel its twings and twangs
and I realize

How fortunate I am.