Bottom-Dwellers
June 22 2025
The weather gods
who must have grown bored
of the usual seasons and occasional storm
are playing games with us;
threatening rain
with angry cloud and gusting winds,
then dangling summer sun
in the fleeting breaks
before snatching it away.
I can hear them cackling
with juvenile delight
in their celestial redoubt,
lounging about
like effete aristocrats;
playing keep-away
like toddlers drunk on power.
Or could that be thunder
coming our way?
Rain? . . . for real?
As if they know how much we need it
down here
in this desiccated tinder-box
of parched earth and blasted crops,
livestock
dying of thirst.
So perhaps not bored gods
teasing us
like gleeful little kids,
but malicious ones
we somehow crossed
afflicting us with heat.
And even if there are no deities
or higher power
but only ourselves
we’re still as powerless;
left to contend
with whatever comes,
while feeling whipsawed
between hope and despair.
Or, as now
from faint hope to false
to none at all.
An atmospheric ocean
is roiling overhead
like water on the boil,
while we can do no more
than anxiously look up
from way down here
on its bottom-dwelling floor.
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