Of course, you believe the climate scientists.
Sometimes, you wish you didn’t.
Sometimes, you wish you could be a flamingo
or better yet, an ostrich—
head…sand…yada-yada.

And then you hear about a brush fire in Texas.
How it refused to rage in confinement of its own borders.
How it grew to the size of Rhode Island.
How it surpassed the size of the biggest blue city
where red-angry men sent busloads of dreamers.

And then you read about a super rain-river in California
that loiters in the sky and keeps falling down
drunk on your party like it’s a guest who won’t leave,
who keeps jumping into your pool shouting Cannonball!
until the entire neighborhood is flooded.

And then you watch one little honeybee
alight on the Lace-cap Hydrangea beside your patio.
You wonder why it chose such a blue bloom.
You want to ask this little fella:
Where did all your work buddies go?

And then you listen to Ludovico Einaudi
play “Elegy for the Arctic”
on a grand piano set atop an iceberg—
Do the polar bears know
he’s playing their swan song?

And then you take your granddaughter to see the flamingos at the zoo
and every time you read:
sorry this exhibit has been relocated to a different habitat
you worry the animals will never be seen again
in any habitat.

And then your menopausal insomnia kicks into high gear.
You can feel yourself getting older a little faster every day.
You’re exhausted by scientists’ extrapolations.
Your mind wanders aimlessly
and you ponder smaller problems—

Who will feed your dog when you are gone?
Who will find and finish your unfinished poems?
Will any of this matter to anyone?
Or will everyone forever be too busy to notice
how even the moon doesn’t like her mother anymore.

How she loves to throw us shade like she’s a teenager
storming off to her room, pissed-off at all the grown-ups—
distancing herself farther and farther away—
crying in the dark for what tomorrow might bring, afraid
it won’t bring anything, at all.