the neighborhood peewee
usually sings on our street, never south of 26th – if you notice such things you start to notice such things: you can tell how much rain fell by looking at places it usually collects, those which are more, those, less shallow. july, hottest terran month on record marked the first normal u.s. rainfall mo. this yr. – except for douglas co., ks., apparently: last week the airport got 3” but we got 8, just west of here, 12: that’s how it goes: everybody knows: microclimates normalized & wacked-out: the interior of b.c. hotter than here – kamloops is 95 f – just in time for hot nite in the city & ribfest! meanwhile, “a tornado ripped past a new jersey office, baltimore has been hit w/flash flooding & > 700 flights cancelled @ the three airports in the n.y. metro area, as t’storms batter the east coast” – this sort of thing hardly seems worth mentioning anymore, so from now on i won’t; but copperhead bites up 83% in texas since last year? – now that’s news. esp. since (sez the w.s.j.) herpetologists say it probably has something to do with climate disruption. as do the deluges: 441k tons-worth of rice lost in bangladesh as fields are washed away, even as the i.p.c.c. sez "food security increasingly affected through yield declines – especially in the tropics – increased prices, reduced nutrient quality, supply chain disruptions"; meanwhile i ask a friend from maharashtra if people back home talk about the drought – no, of course not, not in that state: they talk about the floods: 140k people evac’d (“wall and building collapse, breaching of dams, landslides, floods & lightning”); + 5x normal rain in karnataka; wettest 24 hrs. ever in tamil nadu (36 in., in fact – we need this kind of particularity); 30k people forced from homes by rising waters in myanmar, roofs floating like boats in the water: “than aye, 42, diabetic & partially- sighted, struggled to escape the deluge”; & the droughts: olas de calor in tamaulipas, mexico & castellón, spain (107+f in both); in rural queensland, “morale is low, businesses struggle to stay afloat as residents tighten their purse strings. some farmers won't plant any crops at all this coming season” – all due to “the worst drought in recorded history” (hard to “stay afloat” in a drought); while in n.s.w., trains ship in 725,000 litres water / day to enable coal mining to continue; & elsewhere, “the world’s largest forest has been on fire for months,” smoke spreading from the urals to the cascades. the smoke smell in yr clothes; mildew on ceiling; dust in yr eyes; scent of dirty clothes crossed with rotting vegetation one gets after a flood; absence or presence of a particular bird: all the little ways life can be different, in a moment
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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. |