after the storm

Supposedly I am resting. Two days of unexpected rest, from classes and commute; an extension for that paper that was supposed to be due yesterday. Two days to sit curled under a blanket, drinking hot coffee, taking a break from the world.

A knot of worry, anxiety in my gut that will not go away. I watch pictures of the city I will always think of as home flooded: tunnels and normally busy avenues filled with rushing water, facades of buildings falling off. This is supposed to be the stuff of movies, dramatic scenes you watched with a skeptical air. I think of all the people I know, scattered around the East Coast - were they all as lucky as I, my power humming along as always?

The sky is still this unnatural, pure-white color, uniform in its gloom.


you watch seasons pass, each one stranger than the last:
hot when it should be cold, and massive storms.

you watch as global warming becomes climate change,
which in turn becomes the Thing Of Which Mainstream Politicians Do Not Speak.

(meanwhile, automobile sales in the third word soar,
unregulated factories spring up, ready to produce cheap goods.)

instead they discuss legitimate rape, 
suggest that government should control the most intimate functions of your body,
heap contempt on being poor.