Poem of Our Climate

Woman builds wall to keep floodwaters out of tent in IDP camp in NW Syria. (UNICEF/Khaled Akacha)

happy kansas day!
160 yrs ago today, u.s.
admitted ks. as a new state --
they needed all the states they
could get, since they were losing
some, at the time . . .

but: present day: let’s go to press:

25,000 acres scorched
in patagonia, 18k humans evac’d;

same number displaced
in mozambique after cyclone eloise;
250,000 affected; city of beira
re-destroyed (3rd cyclone in 2 yrs)

& remember the siberian wildfires
from last summer? guess what.
they’re still burning.
zombie fires: the peat keeps
smoldering, smoke rising
through the snow in jan.,
in -58 f temps

but some good news for russia:
gas tanker ships can now sail
the arctic ocean in january!
not much sea ice any more (arctic
ocean “a whole new ocean,” not
just a big ice sheet anymore)

& no ice in gulf of st. lawrence --
the titanic would’ve had
smooth sailing today;
highest sea-surface temps ever

(we’re like the guys who
were on the stern, as it hove up
in the air towards perpendicular:
we’re not dead yet!)

while here in the wheat belt,
“soil moisture shortage
above average” — always swell
when ks. is above average
in anything — “signs of damage
to the 2021/22 crop”;
as we say in kansas,
ad astra per aspera, and
we gotta lotta aspera

meanwhile

in syria, refugee camps
flooded again, roads cut off,
67,600 desperate humans affected;
landslides in indonesia;

while back in the states,
it rains & rains on c. california coast,
leaves 400k w/o power,
washes out burn-scarred gullies,
causes debris flows; what are they?
"a debris flow is kind of a flood
on steroids,” sez the debris-flow
expert

so, not surprisingly,
“roughly 35 million homes, or nearly
a third of the nation’s housing stock,
are at ‘high risk’ of a natural disaster,
per a new study by corelogic.”

(“not mine,” i hear myself think)

“properties at highest risk: california,
e. and gulf coasts, texas, oklahoma,
nebraska, & kansas” --
wait — what? where? . . .