Fire Air

It’s amazing what we give you
That you take for granted. The air
You breathe, for instance. Oxygen.

Know what that is? Any idea
How much work it took, how many
Generations passed, thinking breath

Was just air, or spirits, or less?
How many experimental
Plants and animals died

To figure out that fire in air?
And to think, it’s your most core food,
Multicellular rocket fuel.

Now, you just know. You don’t think twice,
Unless you bump into a book
On the history of science

With a passage on oxygen
And how it, laboriously,
Was found and elucidated.

You need some oxygen? You know
So much that you don’t know you know,
Don’t know how you know it, don’t know

How it was found out. You just know.
There you go. Welcome to our world,
The world your breath has made of us.