Bottom-Dwellers - June 22 2025

 

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.