Giving Up Smoking

It’s stupid breathing in and out of one hole.
You wouldn't eat and shit that way
or listen and speak. So a friend teaches you

meditation using your nose to breathe in
and your mouth to exhale.
But you’ve only one windpipe.

It gets you in the end. It’s all tidal -
time becomes a tide, quieter at night,
gurgling through shingle, filling rock-pools,

your soul tethered like any sail must be,
billowing each day. With each breath, each spring,
the earth clears its lungs of green

up through branches until the tips burst with it,
all that summer as you count each day,
each breath, sucking your final words back in.

Tim Love


If you have any comments on this poem,  Tim Love  would be pleased to hear from you.