Reading how Mansfield claims the word air 
is to live in it.
 
Pure scheme vs. science anxiety.
 
Not the duck of a boy emphatic
nor the rich-leaning Rosemary,
 
more a chance to inhabit
adrenal pressure—
six hours of braided sky
pushed through cloud braille.
 
*
 
How to steady up when all at once
air batches you out to crash phobias,
 
night after night,
wing tensions grazing your head?
 
*
 
Small curve of trust in a child’s joy at architecture.
 
At the terrorist check
threshold and counter-threshold—
 
a sparrow’s fear of total sunlight,
a studious approach to Boeing assemblies.
 
*
 
Carefully your ration array of clothes
checked in tight folds           touches
 
and is how air means,
 
clipped around the roots of a hand
 
as you look back gesturing—
once     twice   finally.
 
*
 
Air as the steadying of addiction:
how to breathe as the shadow dips?
 
Air-guides to breakers at the logic gate
the perfect crime, always getting away.
 
Evidences in landing vapour—
the movement of my hand on your back that says               
 
‘go’.
 
*
 
The route I take I take on foot,
afraid and tenderly loyal.
 
At the ventilation tunnel
the smooth saturation of air vocals,
every tenor, decorous.
 
Your flaunting of altitude
is strictly west-hugging.
 
How the difference tells?
 
There was a cold bitter taste in the air
and the new-lighted lamps looked sad.