About Whales and Breathing

I’m thinking of whales
who sleep using only one side of
their brains, the other half stays awake
to make sure they’re still breathing;
thinking of how it used to be
before breathing had become routine
before it stopped, and someone
nudged me awake, how everything
I’d do, like making coffee in the morning
once was like breathing, I’d feel
every breath, could taste and see it,
I didn’t need someone else
to remind me, when breathing wasn’t
just pushing out one gray day
to let another in; I’m thinking

of people struggling to let out
each breath, tied up to ventilators
for months, not making it, and
thankful to be breathing at all;
I’m thinking of whales this Thanksgiving
how they breathe, and what
it takes to be alive every minute

*

Not Them Again

I wasn’t thinking of Eve
mythed from Adam’s rib when
I broke off the last part of my cat’s name,
Samsara, to create hers, six weeks
after he was gone on his 17th birthday,
a few days before my estranged brother also left…
did it to get Samsara back,
sister to a brother she never met
brings back my own brother
but this poem is not about him

Sara, would have none of it.
No lap sitting cat, would not let me
force her into his image, led only
by her instinctive nature
I watch her breathe new life
into this name, to own it absolutely

and see a long line of women
shadowing her, my own struggle against
a favored male sibling I resented…
that ongoing fight for women
to be who we are, a fight
for not against who we’re not

*

Linda Lerner is the author of 17 collections, including Takes Guts and Years Sometimes & Yes, the Ducks Were Real from NYQ Books (2011 & 2015) and When Death is a Red Balloon, her most recent collection (Lummox Press, 2019) Her poems have appeared in Maintenant, Paterson Literary Review, Gargoyle, Chiron Review, Free State Review, and Rat’s Ass Review among others.