The General History of the Air, Defined and Begun

-title of Robert Boyle's posthumous 1692 edition

1. The Priority of the Sky

Allow the life you've lived to come to air--
the air a shelf your life to soon contain,
each breath a place to mark the sky within.

You swallow it each day in hungry lungs.
The air a shelf your life to soon contain

because you cannot feed on breath alone,
but breath alone can stall or stop your life
like nails can fix a plank or split the grain.

The sky is always in you and without,
but breath alone can stall or stop your life.

The sky frames air you cannot see but trust
to be a canvas painting every day
for you to people scenes with-children, wife,

husband, friends or enemies-your empty stage
to be a canvas painting every day

like nails can fix a plank or split the grain.
For you, to people scenes with children, wife--
allow the life you've lived to come to air.

2. Airborne

Look closer. See the cipher of sun and rain steaming
the day's communiqué is neither random nor sublime;
better to strip its layers like peeling the bristled hide
from a fat boar to reveal that meat is muscle and blood,
better to gun eight cylinders to a last redline ride;
the message of air is the only message found in time--
a letter waiting in the box for all awake or dreaming.

The day's communiqué is neither random nor sublime;
the obvious light shifts to shade, afternoons soon collide
with the sun's daily failures and the loss columns flood
with redshifting figures quickly depreciating side-by-side.
The message of air is the only message found in time

unless the code raises its labyrinth of skirts with a wide
grin like an invitation to roll about and rut in the mud
until wet sod fills mouth and lungs. No reason to decide

the message of air is the only message found in time
beyond air's own weight, inevitable as the draining tide
returns to chew again the spit of land like a heifer's cud,
grinding soft for the ocean's belly the glacial landslide.
The day's communiqué is neither random nor sublime;

a letter waiting in the box for all awake or dreaming,
the message of air is the only message found in time--
and like most messages sent or received its author lied
to make life seem cheery or hopeless, full of such crud
or cream the happy or sad reader's judgment is denied.
The day's communiqué is neither random nor sublime;
look closer and see the cipher of sun and rain steaming.

3. Fiesta en el solar

Script in sand and salt in the breeze
as heat cakes the afternoon slipping
toward evening and bonfire smoke
like a ladder of cloud, like desire
mixing in the air, a stiff shot poured

straight down the throat, skin poured
out and the sweat and slick oil stinging
the wind with must and might, desire
waving like a semaphore, a banner
of distress slicing the sky like smoke

on the dunes, whipgrass flashing desire
with each gust like grunion silvering
the moonlit shore, oily as smoke
from offshore rigs burning off pockets
of natural gas, fuel and fortunes slipping

into the combustible air, solid as smoke
and the future and the next hand reaching
out, waving off the deer flies stinging
the flushed skin, winging the currents
rise and fall, negotiating with the breeze.

4. Fiving the Sky

We are day laborers who must also pull the nightshift
in our temporary employment by the atmosphere.
How many bales of breath are lifted in and out of us?

There is no scale to weigh our effort, no wage to cash in
since cashing in and clocking out is what we work against.
Does each minute we measure count against our retirement?

No. Because when we retire the air claims so few of us.
Because so many give the earth, the water, the fire first call.
Why do we go to ground, to sea, to flame when we are done?

The wind will not raise the shell we leave behind. Our last
undoing and decay no longer welcomes the air inside or out.
What good are we to heaven if our final task is to rot to get there?

How many bales of breath are lifted in and out of us?
Does each minute we measure count against our retirement?
Why do we go to ground, to sea, to flame when we are done?
What good are we to heaven if our final task is to rot to get there?
The air will find us. We will find the air. Breathe deep.

5. Divine Nothing

No god of air commanded
a father to offer his son's throat
in a blood covenant, a test
to try the hand, seal the fate.

Fate casts air no bones--
test air's oracle in each
throat clearing. No angel
commanded air's birth.

Bones and stones and sticks
each fly and fall alike.
Angel of breath, protect
birth and all between--

between the first and last,
protect question and answer
alike, make our lives glue that
sticks to the page of the day.

Commanded to offer a throat,
test our will to deny fate.
Sticks and stones bruise alike.
Protect the first, last, and between.

6. On the Air

Chirp and stutter like a blue jay's
complaint until the tune
whispers in, broadcast rune
oracle's blaze

of electric sky, half moon
pouring out blue light,
current switching night
to too-soon

day, tired hands and tight
mouths like work true,
hard, blue, leaves you
for flight--

rest, listen, renew--
till dead air
will not share
blue.

7. Solving for the Skyline

Trust minds to solve what lives can't bear
since stone will find its way to ground.
They still will fall, they still will die;
and though blueprints can't explain why
the towers' absence makes no sound,
its echo deafens, beyond compare.

In such a space the light will glare,
a beacon above the funeral mound,
two empty beams that fill the eye.
Since steel will never fence the sky,
the only guarantee we've found--
build cities lighter than the air.

Since steel will never fence the sky,
since stone will find its way to ground,
build cities lighter than the air--
they still will fall, they still will die--
the only guarantee we've found:
trust minds to solve what lives can't bear.

8. The Invisible College

Like an open hand is never empty
the air seals the safe of each breath
and turns the dial even as the tumblers
fall into place. Knowing the resistance
and pressure enclosing us releases

the lock, freeing our lungs' call from
the cage of shallow ribs. The muscle
and pressure enclosing us releases
strength shelved within, our studies
fall into place knowing the resistance

to new theorems proving the value
of gasp and gulp, our oxygen equations
fall into place. Knowing the resistance
and finite realm of answers stalls us
and turns the dial even as the tumblers

become our old solutions falling away,
a compass without direction that spins
and turns the dial even as the tumblers
are the sun's hours on the sail of time.
The air seals the safe of each breath

like light on the edge of the world;
like the exhalation of day's beginning,
the air seals the safe of each breath
in dark hours charging blood's circuit
like an open hand is never empty.

9. Air Hunger

Fresh air can taste as warm
as berries ripe and full
of light, their stain and seeds

upon our teeth, mouths full
of planting, each day's seeds
to nest in lungs like fields

awaiting growing, seeds
the fuse to spark the field's
next life, next breath to last.

Like crops begin in fields
just turned--the rain won't last,
won't hold them back--the seeds

will wait, new lives can last
through cold and night till seeds
like air can fill blank fields

below all sight where seeds
begin to spark, burn fields
with fires of life so full

and new they feed the fields
and feed themselves so full
of light, so ripe and warm.

10. Unseeding the Cloud Chamber

Like a coconut crab shelling
you from the palm's green clouds,
air has a way of foretelling
events with a thunk! soon swelling
up on your noggin.

Like the oily wind you're smelling
tomorrow's fires in now,
like slippery elms need felling
before gypsy moths are telling
the trees' fortunes

in the fading lifeline welling
out the pit of the trunk--
that breeze from the west is yelling
take cover! this storm's propelling
more than dust

in its clouds, pressure rebelling
against barometric
sanity, there is no dwelling
that will stand today, dispelling
all thoughts

of shelter, force of air excelling
in destruction, rain compelling
us to face the coming
flood with luck and prayer for quelling
clouds.

11. Daysailing Twilight's Sensible Horizon

Daysailing--
wind-race

against twilight's
draining shadows

air's palm sensible,
pressing forward, holding

up today's flickering horizon,
shallow ember; coal horizon

waiting, tonight's bounding
limits, dark's sensible

lodestar marking
home--twilight's

ending
daysailing.

12. In the Air

The air exists since we believe
we know its pieces in our blood,
and yet the air did not conceive
that we would rise up from the mud.

Perhaps the air did know the mud
could raise us? Air, if we believe,
could know much more than we conceive
it knowing--doubt is in our blood.

But if the air decodes our blood
and birth, can we still say the mud
is rightly the place to conceive
of life--spontaneous, we believe--

or should we now learn to believe
the evolution in our blood
is truly where air did conceive
to breathe its life into the mud?

13. Morning Skywalk

Step out onto the stair of wind,
the slightest breeze to lift these days.
Burn off the fog disappearing like the escalator's last step.

The slightest breeze to lift these days
won't tear apart the sun you'd mend,
its bishop's ring a ragged crown selling short indulgences that

won't tear apart the sun you'd mend.
If air could only shine in rays
the sky would show itself like a psychedelic album cover by Cézanne.

If air could only shine in rays
the light would glow to heaven's end
like a lake of white candles floating toward an empty cross.

The sky would show itself like a psychedelic album cover by Cézanne
like a lake of white candles floating toward an empty cross,
its bishop's ring a ragged crown selling short indulgences that
burn off the fog disappearing like the escalator's last step.

14. A Hedgehog for the Air Duct

When Agamemnon arrogantly refused the ransom offered him
by Khryses, Apollo's priest, a generous and fair ransom of gold
for the quick release of Khryses' daughter, Apollo made a burning
wind of plague which rose quick in the air, its burning a painful exit
from life. This painful wind remains a plague in our vindictive air,
though our plague has many names, our wind not just born of lust,
not visiting the names we love in their multitude of varied lives
because a single king thought visiting his will upon a captive girl
was his victor's right. Still, the death and sickness air brings now

is no less arbitrary in its choice of rank and file who have to pay
the price air can exact from all of those who have no choice.
Our science seeks to be exact about each virus invading the air,
invading past cures that science seeks to arm our bodies with;
but viruses roll past our cures, invading bodies with too much ease.
Though we improve upon past cures, the ease with which disease
continues to improve itself leaves us frustrated by disease like
ten-year veterans frustrated by the impenetrable walls of Troy.
Our modern warfare tends to find its foe evolving with each

yard of earth we claim. In this combat victories are shortlived,
but we live longer. Victories invent new weapons for our arsenal
like masks, filters to trap new enemies, weapons blocking infection
as it masks in unseen forms. To trap such threats our weapons must
be like pillbox guns, razorwire hedgehogs, weapons to trap unseen threats
or at least slow the advance. Our unseen guns rest quiet in the pillbox,
the next advance in medicine we hope will slow or stop each new virus.
Perhaps our best new defense is hidden in old-fashioned wisdom:
Mend the walls and keep them strong. Like the hedgehog, be prickly.

15. Off the Air

Fat voices blabbering are lazy cousins to the quick
dance of sweet notes Perez Prado orchestrates around
the knife of the trumpet, flash of sharp blade cutting,
slicing the unsuspecting late-night listener's radio
into a loaf of hot, fresh brown bread ready for honey

and butter, or, better yet, pouring out the honey--
gold tumbler of sweet rum, sugar crystallizing the radio
until el Dia de los Muertes is every day, the living cutting
work and studies to flock to the cemeteries, ring around
the headstones until the raptured dead are quick

again, ready for the next tune and the next, quick
hands and hips and feet kicking up dust and turf around
the empty graves, celebration in the sweet air cutting
off the doubters, the chatterboxes on the radio
who would waste the sound on talk, their own honey

voices all they want to hear, their ears clogged with honey--
bee's wax like a corpse who doesn't hear the radio
with this sweet music fill the night air, cutting
out the prattle like a tumor, spinning the sound around
so fast wind should ignite, light the distance hot and quick.

16. One Last Problem

Before we buried our good friend the natural philosopher, we were charged to
return his mouth and nose and throat and lungs to the air
even though the directions we were supposed to follow to

accomplish this task--in the words of the estate's executor--were
temporarily unavailable, and since our recently departed friend, in all likelihood,
he was not expected to return with instructions any time soon and

even though the directions we were supposed to follow to
fulfill this unusual request were missing and we very sincerely wanted to
return his mouth and nose and throat and lungs to the air

even though the directions we were supposed to follow to
satisfy our friend seemed more like a job for an alchemist like Paracelsus and
he was not expected to return with instructions any time soon and

accomplish this task, in the words of the estate's executor, were
instructions necessary? since the 20th century proved a hot oven would do for anyone to
return his mouth and nose and throat and lungs to the air.