only half-breathed air

The poems found in "only half-breathed air" offer sobering meditations on social decay. At the intersection between poignant images and words of unwisdom, Merifield's collection of purasu ni takes readers on a tour through the world: complacency, corruption, economic and ecological exploitation, spiritual alienation, daily and relational grief, and the weight of life. But it's not all doom and gloom. Peppered throughout the rubble are odes to forgotten virtues: solitude and the hope of connection, a capacity for simple pleasures, and the power of nature and its wilds. The world may be burning, but we can survive. If only one small breath at a time.