I have often wondered where our breath goes
after it leaves us.
We exhale a vaporous cloud into the atmosphere
and then what?

I imagine billions of beings breathing in, then out
in unison like one great lung.
Creation's atmospheric breast swell's with life, then
exhales the carbon-dioxide poison.
Where does it all go?

Breathing in, breathing out like a great big accordion
with no sound played.
Life giving, life taking is sucked in then out
in each breath we take
from the atmosphere around us.

Perhaps like pouring a bucket of water into the ocean
our breaths are only absorbed into
the great, impersonal atmosphere all around and about us
neither adding nor subtracting from its substance.

I much rather hope that breath is added to breath
to make up an ethereal choir
the cacophony heard singing the vitality of living beings
like whispers in the tops of pine trees .

All our years of breathing in fresh atmosphere and
exchanging it for used up gas.
Do we leave more behind than we take in
our lifetime or are our breaths measured out carefully
in finite supply.

When that last breath is taken then released
emptying the lungs one final time
the wind and spirit no longer return because
they are forever released to freely float, mingle, and wander among the atmosphere, winds, and clouds.
One breath joined with all breathing.

Perhaps one day my spirit will float upon the breath
of creation, carried along by its winds to places
I have not yet been.
Released from the hardened form of my body and mind,
my spirit, like my breath upon the wind, then
may blow wherever it wills.