Forgetting Air

Some spring mornings in Fort Morgan,
stepping into the parking lot,
crossing the mowed lawn of campus,
it is easy to forget about air.

The breeze is strong and clean and sweet,
oddly lacking our factories’ famous scent:
cheesy beef beet poop soup. Relief!
The smell of money went walking somewhere.

But then, entering the building,
we are greeted with night’s awful breath,
inhaled and held by brick and mortar
long before morning wind kicked in.

A building cannot exhale through a new day’s
shortly opened doors. We enter the stench,
take our usual breaths, filter, forget:
like inevitable death, it fills us.