Common as Air
When Mrs. Weiss told us in earth science
that somewhere camouflaged within
our every lung-full of air marches air
Hitler breathed and Khruschev and
Richard Speck, I began breathing less –
shorter intakes, pauses after each exhale –
willing to endure panicky bursts of craving
in exchange for reducing the likelihood
of those radioactive atoms passing
from lung to blood to brain. If she included
mention of the Buddha or Madame Curie,
I do not remember it. Terror is airborne.
And though I have been slow to believe,
so are wisdom and beauty, the breath
of canticle and rainforest, and in such
measure as dwarfs the one or two
barbed furious parts per million of all
that is our phenomenal inheritance. How
I wish now a teacher had told us that this
is the reason, when we hyperventilate,
we get so dizzy – so much goodness
flooding our little brains it very nearly
bowls us over, tips us toward our knees.
-Brad Davis
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