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# Breathless - a poem by Linda McInnis
- URL: https://www.missingwitches.com/breathless/
- Published: 2023-12-01T15:07:00.000Z
- Updated: 2023-12-01T15:40:27.000Z
- Description: Winter’s kiss falls softly
- Author: Linda McInnis
- Tags: Zine, Witch Poetry

## Breathless 

  
Dead branch fingers reach

In supplication,

Adoration framing Her round fullness

In the silverpale sky;

The clouds try to cover Her,

Fly before Her, but

Reflected radiance chases

Them away until

They sweep ’round Her,

Circling the orb with

Crystalline prisms of shattered rainbow light.

  
This night is hushed–

Thin blanket of snow

Sprinkles silence with each unduplicated flake.

Winter’s kiss falls softly,

The percussion of bare limbs

Makes muted rhythm behind

The melody of wind.

  
The world waits under this

Sliver perfection, paused in

One eternal instant,

Open and awake within the

Quiet winter somnolence:

She knows

Hibernation is not sleeping,

Meditation is not dreaming,

And stillness is the Center of every dance.

  
Tonight, the dancing meets the pause,  

A holy pas de deux–  

Whirling snow rising upon the soft, cold winter wind,  

Hanging for that illuminated second,  

Weightless in the crisping air,  

Until She breathes once more;  

The stillness cracks,  

And we dance again  

Around the axis of the world.

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*Linda McInnis is a traveller on the blue highways of life. After a half-century of working at various jobs ranging from circus cook to managing the complaints department for a national HMO, she is happily unemployed, a great-grandmother, writer, quilter, poet and solitary witch.*

*You can find her on Instagram @grumpygrannymc, on Twitter (still) @thegratefulgran and occasionally on her blog* [*www.gratefulgranny.wordpress.com*](http://www.gratefulgranny.wordpress.com/?ref=missingwitches.com)*. She welcomes all contact with fellow back roads travelers.*