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BREATHING
Somewhere at this very momenta baby takes its first breath,a man dies unexpectedly,a fledgeling bird takes flight,a star is bornor enters its death throes,one of the last of a species is gone,a battle is fought in a senseless war,a waterway is fouled with pollution,smog grips a city,an old man clings to memories.I am still aliveand…
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DROWNING
Stop and breathe, deeply,don’t look at the smog,at the particles hangingin your air like a curtain. Don’t pause to considerwhat you are inhaling, don’tpicture your alveoli cloggedwith what you can now see. You are drowning slowly ina sea of air, so imagine yourselfa fish struggling in the waterof a sea you have laid waste to.
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MARCH ON
We marched regularly, often carring placards,this week against an insane warin a place we had no busines being,next week for the racial justicepromised for a century but never delivered,and then for the ecology, trying to savethe world that our parents promisedfor us as little children and failedto provide, choking through the smogand the teargas, scraping…