Without Oxygen

                  
I walked today without oxygen              
To where the corn on either side                  
Slapped leaf upon leaf                  
And urged me on.                  
                 
The mulberry tree perhaps              
Saw me unencumbered                  
By the heavy bottled air                  
And dropped a gift berry in celebration,    
Scoffing at fallacies pathetic.
                 
Magic whispered abracadabra attaboys            
As I thought of my lover                  
And wished her here                  
To walk with me freely again                  
As we did scant years ago.                  
                 
I listened for animals abandoned                  
And heard instead a woodpecker                  
Demanding entry of a tree.            
Crickets scraped mating calls of      
Come-to-me-Come-to-me    
There’s-not-much-time      
Come-to-me            
       
Then said goodbye to all their raucous beauty                  
Lest this be the last of summers seen,                
Said goodbye as if it were a question          
With cars and trucks                  
Rolling by too far away to hear                  
Going somewhere I can no longer go.            
                 
A fleet of enchanted cumulus floated dreamily by                  
Above the unrelenting green of corn                  
With tassels reaching up                  
To touch the impersonal sky          
And sang in the choir voices of corn                  
That soon enough it will be time                  
For old men here below                  
To let all things bleakly beautiful  go.                  
                 
                 
                 
Th, 18 Aug 2022