I’d like to share the poem Air by Victoria Adukwei Bulley, a British writer and filmmaker of Ghanaian descent who is a rising star on the English language poetry scene. Air contains beautiful parables of breathing and poetry, giving shape to the relationship we have with ourselves through the breath as well as with all those we breathe together with, sharing the poem of life.
Air Friend, I saw you sitting at the window of yourself high up in the loft watching it all go on without you. I was ice & you were almost shadow. I waved like a child on a passing boat. Unsure of whether or not this counts I want us to remember the unreadable air. How it waits to be recast by the touch of our lungs - our breath alone, a most humble poem: in, out, the couplet we write without thinking. Don’t go. We must stay alive to our place in the family of green & breathing things that use even our sighs to make sweetness from light. What grace. Allow what is simple to be simple. Accept it as truth. Quiet as it’s kept we help the trees to breathe too. Source: Victoria Adukwei Bulley, Quiet, Faber & Faber, 2022