ppm

The air is solid, tickling my throat

As it goes down, like taffy when I chew:

It slides and sticks, the sticking makes it coat,

The coating makes the breathing hard to do.

And I am well; I have no normal trouble;

I waste no time on thinking about air.

Imagine those outside my little bubble,

Who live in normal times in need of care,

And think of how their breath is catching short,

How every intake must become a labor

That as it births still threatens to abort

As each half-lung leans hard upon its neighbor

And threaten to collapse because the smoke

Has turned the air now thick enough to choke.

Altijd

When I consider where my life will go

And how I'll choose to occupy my days,

Some things seem so uncertain, like a haze

Hovers between us, so I cannot know

What I'll be like--or how I ought to grow.

Then all at once, descending like the blaze

Of summer suns, you burn away the grays

And I can bask within your evening's glow.

The future would mean nothing without you.

I don't mean that I couldn't live alone

Or that you have to live your life for me

But that when I consider what I'll do

You give it context; like a crystal grown 

Upon a matrix, you're stability.

250*

It has not been 250 years.

A nation, once declared, must still be won

And that accomplished may still be undone

By ignorance and squabbles, hates and fears.

Once signatures are dry, the task appears:

To make them true--not finish what's begun,

But to begin. The war is still to run,

And then the peace, with its own dangers, nears.

Republics are not nearly automatic:

Perhaps, like watches, they too must be wound.

The declaration--grand, intense, emphatic--

Is nothing on its own but words and sound.

But it can be a horologe's schematic:

The grand ideals are still there to be found.