REFRIGERATORS

There's a ten year drought going on in Australia somewheres, rivers drying up, and the ones still flowing are sluggish with salinity. Our president doesn't believe in global warming. It snowed in Texas this year-- just a tiny bit. Pieces of an ancient glacier broke off of Canada, permanently altering the landscape. The Bay of Fundi's temperature has risen steadily over the past quarter century. It's global warming now. Bush 41 doesn't believe in it. We used to call it pollution.

We studied pollution in school. We broke up into teams, went out and took

pictures of factories with their smokestacks. We weren't allowed out at night and we didn't have the camera equipment for it anyways. We were young, idealistic. The smokestacks worked overtime throughout the nighttime. We were young but we jaded younger back then. We knew about the smokestacks. We didn't know about the poison inside of our refrigerators. We didn't know about the rain.

No one cared much about acid rain until many years later when

the expensive cars sitting on a dock in Florida started pitting from it.

No one cared about the fish getting killed off or the lakes up north going belly up or the rising mercury counts or any of that. It took the possessions and the outcries of the rich. Then, suddenly we cared. And we gave. And we are still giving these years later. Has anything changed?

Our snows have changed. Used to be we had snowpiles along the sides of

the roads over our heads. There was no place for the plows to put it. The winters were bitter cold.

Our winters have become warmer. Less snow. This winter we've had one

huge snowstorm and that was it. (Snowshoeing is better without the

bitter cold.) We used to have five or six. The black ice alone made for

nasty driving. So did the panicking dog who had to have a window open

a crack in all kinds of weather. He was practiced at the art of head-butting.

Our lawn mower got stolen last year. It won't matter though once our

grass lays brown and dieing from the excessive heat.I'm waiting for palm trees to show up in front of the house here. Any day now. I can feel them coming. I fear I will have to sell my snowshoes.

Until the palm trees do show up, I will have to content myself to fighting off a bit of cabin fever. Last year I bought some paper whites and forced them to bloom. That caused a small crisis of consciousness. Did the ancients engage in that practice? I didn't know. I immediately consulted with my more scholarly friends to find out.

This year I am going to buy some sand and throw it all over the house.

I can't risk ripping the time-space continuum again. So I'm making a

beach instead.

Welcome, I will say to anyone who calls. Care for a cool drink? Some

fruit? I'd offer you an ice cream but the ice cream truck is no longer allowed to ring its' bell. I missed it today. We finally care a little bit. The ice man is making his rounds again.

* * *

Time dances, twirling pirouettes. Shadows of a day fading beyond.

Butterflies cling on, defiant in the face of metallic blue atmospheric

forces. Long after all becomes due, I will remember.

sapphoq itching for a coffee

sapphoq