NEW AGE
I grew up with thunder.
Summer storms came with sound effects:
a crackling rumble far off,
or a window-rattling blast overhead.
First the forked slash of lightning.
Then: thud, thud, ka-BOOM!
If you’re outdoors, run!
Here comes hard-hitting rain!
Rain beats on the roof, fills puddles,
turns dirt to mud, floods streets.
If you’re driving, windshield wipers can’t keep up.
Look at that! Whoa!
It’s raining cats and dogs!
It’s raining pitchforks and hammer-handles!
It’s a gully-washer! A frog-strangler!
It’s a typical summer thunderstorm:
Flash! Crash! Downpour!
But that was the Midwest
This is California.
In California, storms come in winter.
Except now, when we’re all on edge:
pandemic that sneakily shape-shifts,
job loss, masked classrooms, shortages in stores,
high fire danger…
Now, when temperatures are unseasonably high,
when trees and structures are dry, dry, dry—
here comes a storm.
A freak storm: lightning, thunder--
but only a spit-in-the-wind of rain…
The lightning ignites fires-- 300, 400, 500 fires,
all burning at the same time.
From space, you can easily see California:
it’s gashed with bright orange flame-trails.
Day after day, the air is thick with smoke.
Ash rains down as far as Kansas.
Small favors:
COVID masks also protect from toxic air.
But it can always get worse.
So keep water and survival gear in the car.
If winds change direction, and firestorms threaten:
evacuate.
High heat. Dry lightning.
Two big names join the long-running drama
starring earthquakes, droughts, mudslides and
floods.
California raises the curtain on a new age.
A new normal.
Meet the ruthless new director:
climate change.
Copyright August 2020 Patricia Doyne
FACING A FRAUGHT FUTURE
Our planet wears many faces.
For eons, it was covered in water,
a face with expressions but no features.
Then rock reared up,
land grew and rearranged,
continents shifted.
Oceans shared salt with snowmelt.
Paramecia and diatoms took a bow,
but became food for newcomers
with shells, tentacles, fins; for monsters
who breathed air and ate meat.
Earth’s new face was diversity
swallowed by mass extinction.
In time, a new family appeared,
fought its way to the top of the food chain
with large brains and tool-using hands.
Earth now reflected this face;
worldwide communities reflected its goals.
Inventions made daily life easier
but more complicated, more expensive.
Grasping hands appropriated resources
as if there were no tomorrow.
Sun that quickened the miracle of plants
now fries, burns, and dehydrates.
Earth’s new face wears the sneer of a bully
who is insecure at heart.
What changes will reclaim our planet?
Make-up? War paint? Radical surgery?
Who decides? Who speaks for a people
who wear a thousand masks,
shout out a thousand excuses?
We look into this fractured mirror
and see the face of the future.
It is the face of a stranger.
Copyright 7/2021 By Patricia Doyne
BOMB CYCLONE
Iguanas in palm trees
freeze,
fall to the ground
belly-up
next to pink flip-flops
frosted with two inches of snow.
Water pipes crack.
Coastal towns flood.
Freeways conceal black ice.
Wind chill nosedives from “brr!” to deadly.
Flights cancelled.
Schools closed.
Cars stranded.
Power out.
The jet stream that fences in arctic air,
that keeps polar gusts safely corralled—
this current has warmed.
Winds, water, and air pressure churn…
The mystery mix
blasts the homeless, freezing in doorways,
blasts stranded travelers, freezing at roadsides,
blasts iguanas freezing in trees.
Scientists question, measure, shake their heads…
Who can deny
that our climate has gone berserk?
Look! It’s raining iguanas!
By Patricia Doyne, Copyright 2018
