From the fiery hills of Maui
to the dry Canadian brush
from the flat lands of the delta
down to Texas on the gulf.

The weather’s downright awful
you can hear the people say,
summers sometimes take bad turns,
but it’s never been this way.

From the tall pines of the Great North West
to the Louisiana shore,
from Florida’s boiling waters,
to California’s reservoirs.

The weather’s downright awful
you can hear the people say,
With the heat domes far above us
Montreal’s hotter than Bombay.

From the fiery hills of Maui
to the dry Canadian brush
from the flat lands of the delta
down to Texas by the gulf

The weather’s downright awful
you can hear the people say,
everyday the heat breaks records,
how long can we go on this way?

From the tall pines of the Great North West
to the Louisiana shore,
from Florida’s boiling waters,
to California’s reservoirs.

You can feel that something’s different,
you can hear what people say.
It kind of makes you wonder,
how long can we go on this way?

Yesterday, a cloud burst in mythologies
and the rain fidgeted over the retreat

of a tidal pantheon; deities swept away
by a current, and we stood awhile, watching

the moon elbow out the dusk. Breathing
is burdensome when cars float on water

and corpses leak out of cavernous
basements. Every tablet, etched, in the cold

heart of building code was read again
and then again. It wasn't enough to blame

Aeolian whim or the raging riposte of Apollo,
now that we had marvelled away Gaia's

ozone skirt. Her amnion always leaked
in folkloric floods each time she birthed

a parable. She once asked Noah to build
an ark so he could ride her waves

and we scrape the sky to impale her
in shards where her womb is soft and yielding,

as we sour the air and burn the water and strip
her of her emerald sigh and melt her hills

and silt her wetlands. Mostly it was the asphalt
plastering her yearning that calcified her veins

and arteries, as she died slowly under our feet.
We could hardly fathom her sorrow for the tears

rolled off her torso like an oil slick
and rode far into the subway for sewers.

(a five minute poem - sorry, that’s all I’ve got)

I came to the university
to get some needed privacy
- to learn about the world
and give adult life a whirl.

I’m up here in the frozen north,
where I expected cold and polar bears
and the pressure of academic cares
- but there’s a storm every week
- my mom, back home, has started to freak.

This weather feels like Florida
should we keep the windows boarded-up?
Can we get the power back?
The butteries are flooded
- we can’t get snacks!

I think it’s all hilarious
and so far, a peak experience.
This looks like one of my best decisions
in spite of natures interventions.

The river has pressed
Sleek backed
Beyond the bank
Forcing walkers back
Giving ducks new horizons
Opposite me here
Wet-footed on the bench
A bare tree is troubled
By some submerged thing
Making a frail and trembling hand
Of its upheld branches

Water moving through this place
Like a dark serpent
Water that fell on hills
Yielded from ice
A hundred miles from here
Passes me now
Passes the willow
Hanging in the last
Orange light of day
Trailing its fingers
In coils and eddies

It is all framed here
Indifferent and alive
Alive and forever passing

Shook jaded soul asleep
Silenced with hazy thoughts
Never fear and fight the unknown
Ground quaking as images talked
Don't know what happens now
Skin is a canvas for dreams
These stained people and endured places
And weary worms bloomed from instinct
They figured out how to rule my nerves and muscles
Surrendered to the hearse in my head
Burning sunsets weigh down my nightmares
To floods that drown me in this bed

I dream that the frogs in my backyard have wings
and they fly up to the trees
in the dewy light of dawn
to meet their maker
and kiss under the canopied shade of listless leaves
grazing their backs
and reminding them of simpler times
down from the watery swamp they came from
their webbed feet leave prints on the bark
muddy and cumbersome
but innocent in their doings
a flash flood of lightning  awakens me
i'm laying in damp earth again
time to go back inside