warm ‘n’ windy –
not a new cocktail, just the way things are around here in l.f.k.: yesterday: hi 55 f / norm 39; lo 39 / norm 18; people were grillin’ last weekend, saying, “gotta like this weather!” i guess i gotta – i might as well: 62 predicted today; but 18 predicted tomorrow, so we’ll be back to “normal” it’s warm in scandanavia, too: no snow in helsinki (just like moscow!) & 46 f; sweden: highest jan. temp since 1858; norway broke its jan record last week – twice – another day of holkehelvete (“slippery- slope hell”) last year europe’s hottest ever but a break for the greenland economy: melting permafrost & sea-ice mean it’s easier to mine & ship rare earth metals! there will be winners . . . & the last shall come . . . meanwhile: landslides – they’re not just for third world countries anymore! “a landslide caused by heavy rain left three caravan holiday homes teetering on the brink of a cliff” in norfolk; “six landslides on railway lines across kent and east sussex” + massive sinkholes on hiways ("what's a st. cole?" she asked), & c & c – a veritable landslide of disaster news – a slippery slope a hell – reservoirs dry up in e. & s. africa, they overflow in cyprus (“residents woke up to find a river where a road had been”); “severe rainfall battered” istambul: rush-hour called off; under- passes inundated; 104 k winds ripped roofs; “body was found in a river bed tuesday” or “buried alive when a landslide hit a makeshift house”; meanwhile, in israel, a man helps 3 escape a car in floodwaters which then sweep him away; it floods & it floods while e. australia really needs “widespread, above-average rainfalls” – not bloody likely soon: “it looks like something that we will have to persist with for some time,” this flaming hell; so, “if you receive instructions to leave, then you must leave” (that sounds like a metaphor); meanwhile a cyclone hits the country’s “top end” w/lotsa rain; meanwhile, 3k people in papua new guinea found food gardens smashed by hail; & in bangkok the water’s starting to taste salty, as the drought creeps on . . . & in all these places there’s a man who says: “put your fate in my hands & i will keep you safe”; & people have to think “who will?”
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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. |