What is breath?

What is breath?
Not the air now within
now without,
the glass is not the water
nor even the sky the air.
I cannot own all that is in me,
passes through me.
The breath is the action
and the actor,
it is the movement of muscles,
diaphragm, that fills lungs
then empties them.
To focus on the gaseous
is to miss the breath,
and mistake its freedom
for our selves.
We are the breath's tension,
we are it's weakness, shallowness.
The tide of our oceans
not the waters.
When we find and focus on breath,
we find ourselves.