Risa Bear’s speaker describes a woman who has pared her life down to almost nothing. The ideas, ideals, faith, and careful reasoning she once held have fallen away, leaving her feeling like a “human desert.” What remains is a simple bodily ritual: three deep breaths, palms together. That small act becomes her way of centering when everything else—even reality, eating, and sleeping—feels provisional. The mood is spare and still, but not hopeless. She turns outward, listening closely to her own breath, to room sounds, outside sounds, and especially to her friends as they share their worries, hopes, and pain. Her bow at the end feels less like defeat than like acceptance and attentiveness. It is a poem about radical simplicity, and about caring that survives after certainty disappears.
Three Deep Breaths — Summary
Three deep breaths, palms together, Here in her room, or elsewhere, she may Rise and take. A habit she has formed, Even as most of her ideas, ideals,
Even her so cherished findings, hard found, Deducted, inducted, reasoned, debated, polished, Even those most like faith, as taught her, Even those most like science, measured, observed,
Peeled one by one: a human desert, she. By three deep breaths, she centers somehow: how? Reality itself a question she's no longer asking, Eating and sleeping themselves provisional.
All she bothers to call caring is now to listen To breath, room sounds, outside sounds, to Her friends, their worries unpacked, their voices Spending both hope and pain. She bows.