Between Your Every Breath by Leland Seese

​Between Your Every Breath
        “And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.”
         — St. Francis

If you would not be like a ruined monk
set up your cell within the hinge between

your every breath.

Overcome the dread of death.
Cliff divers learn the sign to leap,

low point in the flow and ebb of waves
when black bare rocks stare back.

To the novice, wisdom intimates annihilation. 
It is, instead, gateway

to consoling, unconsoled; to understanding
while misunderstood; to loving

when no loving arms are there to hold,
only to release you to eternal life.

​

Leland Seese and his wife live in Seattle with a revolving cast of foster, adopted, and bio children. His poems appear in Juked, The MacGuffin, The Christian Century, and many other journals.

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