I image that all poetry impacts breathing in some way. The reading of it aloud, the connection to emotion, the respite from external stimuli. And, I expect that much of this impact is unconscious, at least, most often, it is for me. This was not the case as I read, The Broken Night, by Bruce Arlen Wasserman (Finishing Line Press June 2022.) Wasserman’s book is an elegy to his father and, I assert, a treatise on the connection between breath and being. An extension or expression of the work of Bachelard, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty. Silence. Inhalation. Exhalation. Being. In which I was aware from the start.
Farmall F-12
It was all rusted iron and grinding gears
the 12 in its name standing for 12 horses
though I doubted, at 19 years, I could handle
12 breathing ones, 6 doubletrees and all those
leather-long reins gathered to two hands
at 3 miles-an-hour but the F-12 did 6 when
minted in ‘36, a year you could still buy rubber
when my father was 15, yet by ‘43 he was 22
wearing lieutenant’s bars and hoping for overseas
though he shipped to Texas and thought to ride
a horse …..
I could spend this space discussing his use of poetic techniques to create the presence of breath, the rush, and Wasserman has these skillsets, but I know Bruce a bit and got to know him further when I interviewed him for this article which leaves me inclined to blame it on a proven desire to break barriers in the quest to express and address the human experience. Bruce, a dentist, a blues vocalist, a song writer, and musician (harmonica and guitar,) a wilderness survivalist, a husband, a Jew, the list goes on, pulls from the extremes of these pursuits to express the awe, devotion, and devastation that encompassed the life Albert Wasserman: Role model. Trailblazer. Ever-present friend.
A Cow and A Calf and…
But this… this head-in, tail-out
asswords rotated transfixation
of new calf would never work
and so the neighbor brought
some specialist, sad sack that he was,
his arm all-the-way-to-the-shoulder
in hot, sticky birth canal, all the while
grumbling about the life he couldn’t
wait to leave, and struggling to turn
that first calf before birthing stillborn.
While Elsie, standing calm,
somehow sensed all that pushing
—five fingers twisting fetus
and wrenching womb—
would eventually work.
And faith, I figured as
not just for farmers
praying for rain, hoping
for healed land and cattle or yield
to pay the banker one more season—
faith, I figured, is far from fact.
It’s a heifer,
heaving every load of life,
trusting every drop of blood
to strange hands,
as the moon arranges
shadows on the ground
and things work out
beyond all control.
Somehow, I’m left with my lack of ability to express how this book will impact you as a reader, but it will. That is to say that if you have ever been around a campfire where everyone is a friend and taken a moment to take it all in, the lift of smoke on the air which blends into the purple dusk, the crack and timbre of laughter, boots on, boots off, the zip of nylon, the passing of a bottle, the first June Bug. Being. Inhale. Exhale. Again.
Today the Sun Shined Black
I was surprised at the finish that your body wasn’t nervous,
that your spirit breathed uninterrupted beauty
as you followed me, just like you always have, each footfall
leaving one last print in the snow, each pause as casual
as any other day, for assessment of the view, the mountains
you would never see again, the finding of the last few blades of green
before our two souls locked together, my hand on your nose…
Katch Campbell is a connector. With a master’s degree in Science and an MFA in poetry, she creates metaphors for her patients and others about the world around us. Her work is an inquiry on the atrocities we commit consciously and unconsciously against each other and the universe. Katch serves as Vice President and is a permanent faculty member at the River Pretty Writing Retreat, a bi-annual workshop in the Ozarks. She has co-led immersive poetry trips to Slovenia and Italy and used to edit for ZoMag.com.