Air

All around us, invisible apart from the particles suspended, misty water vapour, twinkling dust in the sunlight, strands of spiders' webs – and insects, birds and aeroplanes using and exploring the element for loft and direction. Without it, oxygen and carbon exchanged, you, I and other lifeforms would cease. The swirling circulation, from drafts to hurricanes, brings us atoms from the past, recycled dying dinosaur breaths or dusty remnants of the Big Bang. Under pressure air moves, makes things work and within the Earth's cycle condenses water, taking clouds through the atmosphere and falling down, maybe freezing for a moment or millennia, dripping and pouring, maybe deep in the ground, but eventually evaporating again. Deeply or lightly inhaling, our lungs fluttering or heaving, we respire, usually subconsciously but sometimes with more of an awareness of the movement of air from outside in, inside out. We know more now than air, earth, fire, water; each observation and discovery blowing up our balloon of knowledge whose expanding borders show us more and more we do not understand. We see the sun, the moon, and everything in between through vacuum, dreams and air.