Weird. Steve Turner doesn’t believe in air

Having posted on Friday about the importance of the insensible, I came across this great number from Steve Turner. Subverts perfectly the prevailing mood of scepticism…

I DON’T BELIEVE IN AIR

I don’t believe in air.
No one has ever seen it.
No one has ever felt it
between finger and thumb.
Converts talk about
tasting the air
and smelling the air,
but there’s always another explanation;
the nearby sea, a factory’s pipes,
a pile of fresh manure.
It’s not the so-called air
that smells.

Scientists have complete faith
in this air.
They say it upholds
and sustains our world.
Take away the air, they argue,
and we’d go too.
Meteorologists attribute
signs and wonders to the air;
people thrown to the ground,
trees uprooted, the landscape rearranged.
It sounds like superstition to me.
If there is air,
who made it?
Where does it all go?
Why doesn’t it show itself
just one time for proof?

Friends ask me why windows rattle
and hair goes awry,
but I don’t believe in air.
I don’t believe in air.
Air is just another word
for something that’s not there.

(Poems, p138)

Exchange the word ‘air’ with the word ‘God’, and you’ll get the point. Remember Jesus’ chat with Nicodemus…