Classic Poem

Back in the time when you breathed
I would say breath to you and you
would answer back,
I would say breathe to you and you would do it:
I could have filled a community of breathers
with what you had,
it was free, a birthright,
day and night, black and white,
it was yours, given,
the acceptable inevitable companionship of opposites,
in and out, breath or death, breathe or die,
the human situation.

Birds talk about it
from one tree to another,
conversing across a small valley,
they know what they talk about,
they know something is wrong —
your breathing, or dying,
they know and talk about it,
while inside this room with big picture windows
we whisper about it.

We whisper
and they discuss it through trees
and across a small valley,
in their secret language,
they chatter it all out, gossip,
how we lost our power:
what we couldn’t imagine, couldn’t control,
happened.