On the Cusp of Climate Change
Days are like thimbles now, full of small needs,
whatever works, potluck, making do.
I plant aloe in clay pots on the porch, arugula,
orange nasturtium, parsley because it matters.
I am a woman walking under the fan palms
underneath the desert moon at night
in heat none of us like and none of us learn
to live with, no matter how practiced.
Meals are simpler in the recession, black beans,
brown rice, expectations that are smaller.
No big plans. I throw the old petals on the wild grass.
My dog leaps and the lizards race.
Yucca blooms like lilies, elegant, whitish.
Easy down stuff. I put on my best blue shirt
the colour of the sky on a clear day, another way
to make it through, living with what we know.
Seeds to plant. Old jokes to tell again and again.
Lists of what to forget and what always to remember.
The little and the less, all of the I-don’t-know
what comes next but doing it anyway.
Easy down, always ideas of love again, in the pandemic, with days
opening like flowers, blooming, rippling open, colourful, all agog.