Fairy Breath Poem by Charles Cross

Let seasoning breathe! Let the flower breathe!
Let your mother take a look at that, boy,
And then breathe! Before sap in skin,
Before sapling is welcomed, tell your words to

Breathe; and carry-wind, take them on high-air
To dance with thigh and vigor. Tapered memories
And tall glasses long guide highways and hallways
And begone. Breathe the fresh paint! Webs low

Breathe the sole, twined with fairy-features
Brightly lit and a pack of hazard sticks. Breathe,
Deer, before chimes fall not gently as the gifted
Guiding squirrel-herald gliding before tables

To be, or not to breathe brightly bouncing,
Deaf and dumb; and sing
Sweetly, tired young apple-heads, to the auto-
mobiles' melodic reveries crashing into apple-
trees. Breathe child! Breathe scorned mother!

Alighted world! Sell your blood to no jackal
Of the trade! My lover comes to take me
Home, bed me to sleep in the breath a fairy
Once breathed, before her world did weep.