Perfect Weather - June 13 2025

 

Perfect Weather

June 13 2025

It’s too quiet

for this time of year.

It feels as if the world had tipped

or its orbit slipped

closer to the sun.

How unsettling

to feel that something is different

but not be sure what.

So long since it’s rained

and the lush green

of early spring

has wilted to pale.

While the soil is hard as kiln-dried bricks.

Dust kicks-up as I walk,

and every gust of wind

fills the air

with small brown particles.

It’s hard to breathe,

and there’s a dry spasmodic cough

if I’m out too long.

The sun beats down

from a clear blue sky

all day

day after day.

As if the weather report could be a recording

replayed each morning

on AM radio:

It will be sunny today,

hot and dry

followed by a cool night.

Perfect weather

I’d normally say.

But this quiet feels unnatural.

After all, it’s bug season,

but they aren’t swarming, buzzing, or biting,

aren’t driving us inside

swatting frantically.

Black flies

who are normally so thick

you could cut the air with a knife

are either hunkered down

apathetic

or dead.

The rest fly half-heartedly,

as if no longer sure

of their taste for blood.

The mosquitoes are hungry enough,

but so few in number

I can pick them off

one-by-one.

Birds are also subdued,

as if they’ve gone into hiding

from keen-eyed eagles

and circling hawks.

But there are no raptors

out for prey.

And where are the squirrels?

I miss the constant chatter

of little busybodies

who aways sound displeased,

looking down, from somewhere in the trees

as if scolding me

just for being there.

So I can’t enjoy this perfect weather.

Not when the natural order seems off,

the world

on life support.

We complain when it rains,

when low dark cloud

shrouds the sky.

But now it's not rain,

but day after day

of perfect weather

that has me dreading the next.

A preview of what’s to come?

Of what becomes of a water-world

rendered waterless,

the living planet

dying of thirst?

When its blue and green

turns to shades of brown,

and dust choked wind

scours the ground.

When the only sounds to be heard

are its low incessant rumbling

and ominous howl,

the barrage of shrapnel

battering the walls

we shelter behind.

I could almost do without a bug net so far this late spring. Which, combined with perfect weather, should be delightful.

But I feel ambivalent. I can’t enjoy the weather and relative buglessness without thinking about dry wells and forest fire. About the burst of life in early spring turning from turgid green lushness to wilted and struggling. About the disruption of the natural order of life, in which these missing insects — annoying as they are — are a crucial part of the food chain. And finally, about climate change, which is behind it all. And, with the mess we’re collectively making of it, will only get worse.

Hence this dystopian vision of the far (near?) future: a dry sterile planet scoured by constant wind, the air fouled with massive dust storms. As if, due to our negligence, greed, and denial, we managed to turn Earth into a second Red Planet. As if Elon Musk will be able to stay right here and still have his wet dream of colonizing Mars!

(I just realized that I’m writing this on Friday the 13th. So a suitably fateful poem for the superstitious!)