Earth, receive an honored guest

I once attended a talk on elegy given by a fellow graduate student, one of the true scholars of our pack. He spoke of elegy as an act of resurrection. To speak of the dead, he insisted, is to animate their spirit.

Spirit.

Spirare. Spiritus.

To breathe. Breath.

To inspire is to breathe a truth into another.

To be inspired is to accept that truth.

We live only by another’s breath.

This is the truth I accepted from a man who no longer lives.

But in this truth, for me, he breathes.