“how’s your climate
stuff going?” someone asks; “you tell me,” i say. read all about it!: the history of the history of the present today, at 38°58′18″ n 95°14′06″ w it’s sunny, winds s 5 mph; 32 f; wind chill 27; air quality: good. rainfall 10” > norm for year. in these parts, this time of year, it doesn’t get much better than that; plus, we’re 875 ft. above sea level, in the middle of a continent. why think about climate crisis on such a winter’s day? how’s your climate stuff, reader? well . . . if you’re in buenos aires, the aires are around 99 f; if you’re in rio, expect “flooding of streams, rivers, trees crashing and increased traffic jams”; if you’re in s. africa, your neighborhood may be submerged & your power, out, but the drought has packed the soil so hard that rainfall à runoff, not mud; if you’re a coffee farmer pretty much anywhere, higher temps leave yr trees scorched & diseased; if you’re an australian farmer, you probably won’t be very long, if this drought continues (the “most severe in recorded history,” sez the u.n. weather v.p.); if you’re in perth, you sweat (104 f); if in sydney, you suck in smoke (10 x the “hazardous” level – 7.5 m acres alight), & maybe you don yr gas mask & join the 1000s protesting climate denial, or maybe you turn up the a/c & stuff towels under the doors; if in anchorage, you enjoyed yr warmest dec. day ever! & you’re warming 2x faster than the rest of us – not so much of that nasty cold weather anymore! if you’re in central or east africa, you probably aren’t reading this, but trying to stay dry or hauling all yr stuff to a refugee camp, if you aren’t buried under a mudslide somewheres & here . . . well, here cedars & mosses still show green, sweet everlasting sweetens prairies, & thousands of geese & gulls sink, downward to water, on extended wings
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June 2021
Kristin Prevallet Author/Editor
I'm a writer & teacher in Lawrence, Kansas who actually believes the scientists. I wrote a book of poems called Of Some Sky that seems to have something to do with all this. |