Full Of Hot Air Poem by Barbara Attaway

This air is hot and wet. It's heavy!
I'm finding it hard to breathe this
Hot, sulphur-smelling humidity.
I tell my lungs to slowdown the breathing.
We live on the edge of the oilfield.

Sounds here, flow like ribbons of oil
Through the warm breeze.
Seems safer to listen than breathe, so I do,
To a chirp and a flutter and a "Who? Who? Whooo? "
Then the guttural roar of a train runs through.
And I am hit head on.

Could I be dead, though I'm hearing a tune?
Piano chords declare
"Yesterday...All my troubles seemed so far away."
Someone else's troubles...or mine?
The fading troubles clickity-clack
Down the track and
Riding that train, they blow right by me

Leaving me on the porch swing
Still alive after all,
In the hot, heavy, oily-smelling night
With the constant heartbeat
Of an ancient pumping-jack over aways,
Bringing childhood's nightsounds
Forward through the years and
Into this moment

Making me ask, "How many strokes
have you made all these nights, Jack? "
"As many and as strong as your own faithful
heart" he beats.

So, like a pouting child,
I breathe the damp, stinking air.
My heart pumps with the jack,
Never forgetting that involuntarily,
These sounds and smells,
Beats and breaths,
This place and time,
Not one of these alone but all

Fill me
With hot air.