Air

Here’s a poem I wrote a year and a half ago. It feels time to release it from the annals of submission purgatory and share it with the world:

---

“Air”
By Kat Dornian

August 24, 2023
Tunnel mountain,
Banff National Park.
Fog shrouds the river view
as moss cascades off rocks.
Pine and spruce creak
in the gentle mountain breeze.

June 19, 2023
CT scan, enhanced,
reveals three nodules
in my right lung.
The doctor says,
‘We all have nodules,
it’s the pollution and the smoke.’

May 30, 2023
Camp Air-Eau-Bois,
Lac Poisson Blanc.
I breathe new air and
dip my legs in the reservoir
that’s drowning eighty-five
square kilometers of Indigenous land.

May 15, 2023
Air quality index
reaches eleven.
Five hundred and thirty-two
thousand hectares
of Alberta land burned.
We stay indoors and run air purifiers.

October 30, 2022
CT scan shows
‘pleural effusions…
lungs otherwise appear clear.’
I’ve been in the hospital
sixteen days and counting,
breathing oxygen from tubes.

August 29, 2022
Uclulet, B.C.
A two-day drive from home
after summer fires
subsided. I’m on my own,
breathing the ocean
that summons redwood and seaweed air.