The Poetry of Baker’s Lung

Baker’s lung is a term used to describe a type of asthma that can occur in workers of bakeries and mills due to high volumes of irritants in the air. This makes sense, but I never thought about it until my brother mentioned it to me a few months ago. In long-ago bakeries, baker’s lung was apparently common. Today, we know more about how to prevent things like this (don’t inhale irritants), but baker’s lung still happens. We can’t avoid everything.

Irritants enter the lungs and cause hardships. Baker’s lung is a real and serious disease. Yet the literary capacity of these words hit me hard.

I order roughly 400 pounds of flour a month. Most of the bags are 25 pounds each. Opening one and pouring it into my hefty flour bins always results in dust. I hold my breath until the dust settles, or until I can step away, trying to not inhale the particles.

Yet to breathe is to be alive, and to inhale what we love is essential.

We are always breathing in what air is around us, taking in what we need and exhaling that which would harm us. We cannot hold air. It must flow. It must be carried throughout our bodies, into our fingertips, to our toes and our brains. Oxygen gives life, but so do other things. For me, it’s the writer-wife-mom-baker life. While I sometimes go through spurts of focused attention with each one, I never stop being any of these. I inhale the oxygen of these occupations knowing there are woes in everything. Writer-wife-mom-baker sometimes looks like editing-miscommunication-clutter-dishes, but I go on, knowing that it’s all love-love-love-love at its core.

Irritants are exhaled, swept away, washed clean, and I breathe in again what gives life.  

Photo by Olga Kudriavtseva on Unsplash