The Human Sea
The fish exists within its liquid sky,
and breathes the sea as its sustaining air.
It knows no other world beyond that plane
the shining ceiling where the light is bent.
It cannot pass that barrier and live.
We walk upon the surface of the land,
and breathe the atmosphere that we call home.
This ocean made of gas, this weighty veil,
is to the fish what water is to us.
We are the bottom-feeders of the air.
And as the fish cannot ascend to us,
we cannot climb to where the atmosphere
grows thin and fragile, where the pressure fails.
The eagle breathes the air that we would find
too spare to fill our lungs a different sea.
So is the pattern written, clear and deep:
as is below, so must it be above.
Each life is bound within its element,
a prisoner of the pressure it can bear,
all breathing from the same, unending Breath.
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