So many seem to be 'heading for the hills' or their equivalent, seeking to opt out to a personal better life; but can any of us NOT be caught up in global responsibility for what's going on beneath the surface of life's otherwise daily grind? I like the notion of 'wounded air' needing time to heal; perhaps that's what individuals are seeking - the fresh air and space to breathe for themselves, free of the loaded pollution of our over-confined spaces where the Big Issues crowd in and smother. As always, thought-provoking and illustrative work that is carefully weighed, judged and delivered. Thank you. Kate xx

It is troublesome that those who are courageous enough to die for their beliefs fight not for the thrill of victory, but for the preservation of life, while those who are neither willing to fight nor die want both victory and the preservation of a life devoid of courage. Let us hope that the destiny of choice rides with courage.

Your titles are fascinating. Yet this one describes your poem's theme very well. In the past, and old photographs show this very well, we spewed dirty coal dust and ashes everywhere from locomotives, steamships, factories, and homes. I recall the dirty snow from my childhood and my many childhood diseases brought on by bad air.

The solution back there was a higher smokestack. Send the offending smoke up into the jet stream where, as a frequent flyer back in those days, I could often see a dirty ring between the layers of the atmosphere at over 20,000 feet.

We have solved that problem in the last 50 years except in the burgeoning growth of Third World countries and China where it is still allowed as the price of progress and development. Much more insidious is the increase methane and CO2 in the atmosphere, mostly still unchecked and invisible. Hence the problem. Most humans seem to have to be able to see a problem before they believe a scientific explanation.

We are doomed to breathe the hot breath of our ignorance if we don't act quickly.

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2015/07/where-electric-vehicles-actually-cause-more-pollution-gas-cars-0

Ron

The older I get and the more I see of what our species is now doing to our once glorious planet today, I now sadly believe that we are 'hard-wired to self-annihilate.' Perhaps that was always our inevitable destiny.

We humans are under the delusion that the atmosphere is free and limitless as are the oceans. The nickel mining and refining company of Sudbury, Ontario has since cleaned up their act a bit. I passed through in 1970. For fifty kilometers in every direction there wasn't one living tree. Only dead stumps and an occasional sprout of quack grass, just barren earth and exposed boulders. In fact, the Apollo astronauts went to Sudbury to prepare themselves for lunar landscapes. All this was caused by spewing sulfurous exhaust into the limitless atmosphere.