Hanging by A Breath

 

 

 

You’d have heard someone say

“I was hanging by a thread”

As a way of expressing some drama

That had filled him with dread.

 

Some hair-raising experience

He believed was surely the end

But miraculously lived to tell the tale

To both foe and friend.

 

You could hear the expression,

“Boy I was hanging by a thread.

I am not kidding you

But that experience was dread.”

 

For some it’s once in a lifetime

For others it may be twice or thrice

But how ever frequent it occurs

This experience is never nice.

 

 

 

But there is another hanging

That happens non-stop,

It is every minute of every day

And it’s everybody’s lot.

 

It happens to the weak

And it happens to the strong,

To those who think they are right

As well as to them that are wrong.

 

It happens to the poor

And it happens to the rich,

To them that reside in the palace

And to them stranded in a ditch.

 

Politicians experience it

And so too the Pope,

The powerful and the powerless

Without it cannot cope.

 

The believer and the non-believer

The saved and the unsaved,

On a breath we are all hanging;

Both the coward and the brave.

 

Just refuse the next breath

And you will see what I mean, 

If you are successful

It will be your death scene.

 

 

Yes, take another breath

And don't you let it go

And as sure as I am typing now

It'll be the end of your show.

 

As healthy as we think we are

It is the next breath that matters

For life is as long as the final breath

And that aborts all chatter.

 

 

 

Hanging by a single breath

Each and every day,

From split second to split second

The human life drains away.

 

Far more critically important

Becomes the hanging by a breath

For when that final breath comes,

For that John Doe this is death.

 

Stewart Russell © September 21, 2022