Alternative Air Source

If the ocean is only a sequence of shared breaths,

       Then you may dream your way across

Its vastness, until you wake to morning’s reprimands,

       Rising like lilies to meet the radiation.

You never stay under too long, and worry

       You will drown if you can’t learn to breathe

Underwater. Worry you will need to change your appetite

       Soon, new drinks for new seasons appear the color

Of blood, but not the consistency. Foreign thirsts

       Boil, yet somewhere you can taste a memory

Of soft smiles, reheated and crisp, lost sounds as spit shining

       On your lips. Burst rudely into the future, splashing

Meteoroid in the dark searching for solar embrace, gently

       Melting you. Another clumsy moment of reciprocity

Like the years that kill you as they are given.

       This marine life drifts away, stays with you

Only long enough to fill you, but you have bubbles

       In your lungs. Rather, your lungs are bubbles

In Galileo’s thermometer, where fragile rising and falling

       Balances forever against the threat of crash and spill.