Sabbath Devotional :: Shared Breath

Today I am grateful for the many diverse voices that unite under the MWEG banner. I recorded this (below) in my journal after a meaningful experience with the high school choir I conducted a couple of years ago, but it applies equally to the transformative force of multiple voices joining as one for any just and good cause. There is power in shared breath.

SHARED BREATH

A single breath
can make thirty voices rise,
building walls of sound
that swell upward from floor to ceiling,
growing in intensity,
then lapsing backward,
gently,
into the ground.

Air circulates.
Pulses relax.
Eyes close.

In.
Out.
In.
Out.

Thirty separate systems
of veins and valves and ventricles
are bound
and free,
arteries interlocking beneath the soil —
a blood-and-breath defense
against the storm.

In.
Out.
In.
Out.

One final exhalation,
and the safety net of sound
dissolves.

Sixty eyes open
and blink
and adjust
to dim light.

Silence hangs.

A single voice
breathes in
and speaks out,
softened by tears
and strengthened by life blood
that still flows from one heart
to twenty-nine others
and back again.

Each breath passes to a new body,
releasing a spoken song,
a lived story,
a cradled ambition.

One voice
becomes two
then thirty
then one again
until the room rings
and specters who dig with sharp claws
when breathing is suspended
are swept away
in the swift current
of a shared breath.