The breath of her words ignites flame and luminous wind
“She believes in the ga haramata, the wind which blows here hot, here cold [...] though only some will breathe out in bloody chaos. [...] This is, of course, a metaphor. But she lives by it.”
—Zadie Smith: “Two Men Arrive in a Village”
She stares through the pallor
smells infiltrating wildfire smoke.
Gusts of wind surge, recede
each leaf shows its underside
and holds, all but the one
splayed dark maple descending.
She knows there is a coal
in the ash of her belly
that needs her breath
to flame, the breath
of her words.
She knows there is fear in the fire.
Now, she senses the fire in the fear.
She reaches into the gray ash
and finds liquid phrases lit from within.
She discovers there is no pain
in her burning.
Trees bend in hollering gusts and birds
lose their balance on the phone wires
walls of flame in northern forests send
smoke afar, casting sunlight to rose.
She could not have guessed the stillness
of being a flame, how keen her gaze
how her burning attentions focus.
She calls up her metaphor, the ga haramata
and says
We all breathe this cruel wind
but the tyrants breathe out chaos.
Be a living leaf ablaze from within
adhere where you can
fly where you must
on the breath of luminous wind.
Susan Mary Freiss writes poetry to clothe vibrant silence and hear what she might discover. She is a mother, grandmother, gardener, teacher, and community activist in Madison, Wisconsin. Her poetry can be found with Madison Vets for Peace, in Amethyst Review, in A Catalog of Small Machines, and in Lost Blonde’s 2026 Anthology of Poetry.
