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| Says the Climate Arsonist, “It will start getting cooler. You just watch,” as he participates in a briefing on wildfires with California Governor Gavin Newsom, left, at Sacramento McClellan Airport, Monday, 14 September 2020. Source: AAP via SBS News. |
Any way you look at it, things are pretty grim.
Even an optimist (not me) has uplifted about as much
as they could, and still the rivers with their
muddy waters lope over the banks of hope,
stranding us in a flood of bad news. But no showers,
no torrents in sight. The lens of the future
becomes a Picasso painted kaleidoscope.
Rocks from an ominous silted riverbottom sink
even lower, lugging words, thoughts,
images down. Paperweighted laments underwater.
But the truth is so dry. See it coast past the window saying,
Get used to this. The sun must be angry,
or maybe it’s goldening another planet
with better behaved inhabitants. Or maybe
it’s the air, beyond rage, depressed, grieving, draped
in its gray facade. Eventually the situation blurs
into a barrier, a dam, a kink in the hose, pressure
on the rise. Combustion on its warpath.
Phyllis Klein writes, lives, and works in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including Silver Birch Press, Crosswinds Poetry Journal, TheNewVerse.News, Chiron Review, Portside, and Sweet, a Literary Confection. She also has poems forthcoming in I-70 and 3Elements. She believes in artistic dialogue as an intimate relationship-building process that fosters healing on many levels. And the healing power of anything as beautiful as poetry.