“Sitting with the Breath” by Lorne Daniel
Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets' daily poetry dispatch. Read "Sitting with the Breath" by Lorne Daniel.
Sitting with the Breath
By Lorne Daniel
Backs to three walls, monks in maroon fold
into the family chösham, looseleaf prayer scripts
stacked between knees. Chants rise and fall,
rise and fall. Time thumps
from standing prayer drums. Ornate
brass horns curve halfway across the room,
bellow out open-air windows, lift
across the valley of the Black Necked Cranes.
Hour after hour through the day the monks
and the notes come and go, seamless,
this moment and the next, each the same
and different. We sit in the lap of the Himalayas
on the annual ceremony day
for this family of red rice farmers, invited
to share tea, listen, meditate. The notes pulse
in my ear, free of what my mind
calls melody, hollow and frail,
even discordant. A low register cry,
earned and difficult. Yet insistent, penetrating.
I turn to notice the monk beside me
blow hard into the horn with knobs at its end
like the human thigh bone it is: the kangling,
Jigme whispers. A hollowed human femur.
He who plays the kangling reminds us
of mortality and frees himself from attachment
to the body. It is not respectful to ask
about grave robbers or why such an instrument
is created for its one plaintive note. You might
as well ask why a human is created. They are here
before the shrine to the deities, these monks,
leaning into the tradition of the honourable
ancestors, the instruments, bone, breath,
human notes and forever praise.
— Gangtey, Bhutan 2022
Copyright © Lorne Daniel
Lorne Daniel is a Canadian of Scottish and American ancestry. His poetry and non-fiction have been widely published in Canada, the U.S. and U.K.. In recent years, Lorne has re-immersed himself in writing, ‘beginning again as a novice’ through programs at Pacific University (Oregon), University of New Orleans, Simon Fraser University and Bemidji State University (Minnesota). He has a new poetry collection forthcoming from University of Calgary Press (Brave & Brilliant series) in September 2025.
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