It’s enough
not to have winter.
But to have
summer in spring is too much.
Eighties in
the daytime; sixties at night; me, Irish by thermostat, intolerant of any heat
whatsoever, waking, sweating, at 4 am.
I’m watching
from a window now as a neighbor chops grass, leaving only me, the intractable neighbor,
yet to get with the program, everyone else in the neighborhood, in the last
week, subscripting two weeks’ of 80s with gas-propelled high-5s.
But we’re
talking March 25th.
The season
only sipping spring, hardly summer.
And the
neighbors, my neighbors, happily mowing in March.
And me
looking to Earth, noting these temperatures, rivers flowing in Antarctica,
glaciers melting anything but glacially here, there, everywhere. Glacier Park
itself set to lose its name, if not in my lifetime, certainly my children’s;
the glaciers it was named for a given, any time before mine, before ours.
And me,
looking to the nearest corner, the majority of vehicles, SUVs, slurping,
sucking, gasoline, even as we worry that Iran might choke the Straits of
Hormuz, throttle our lifeline to what we need most to make tomorrow, well,
tomorrow.
Making
tomorrow.
For my kids.
Yours.
Our
grandchildren.
Dare we
think, theirs.
Twenty years
ago, a friend, a dear friend, chalked the present to the future, thinking he’d
be gone before the worst.
He’s still
here.
So,
potentially is the worst.
I cannot
imagine a world without glaciers being glaciers. Without, in my loved Vermont,
winter, winter. Without, even here in Iowa, some balance between a
corn-and-soybean summer and icicled winter.
But mowing
in March.
Mowing in
March…
