Climate Change

For Jim Heynen
. . . say it soft and it’s almost like praying . . .

I.

Starts as a baseball game
& then there is a sudden
blizzard. Trapped at first
mother-in-law’s house on

Union Street in
Wyoming, Michigan utterly
snowed in. Still

there is rice & kale & a
pheasant the cat caught in
the refrigerator &

She’s Not There.


II. The Zombies are, though . . .

The Zombies know all
about one’s cover as a fundraiser.

They prove
relentless. We play
Let’s Make a Deal &

The deal is, I will
put up with
what they tell me to.

III.

Hard to make a move
except at one point
I need to pee & the toilet

is full of vegetation that
should be in the
Earth Machine.

IV.

The people are lined up
to eat the earth.

The women are in business
suits. So are the men, but

they smell like compost &
their foulard ties have
earthworms where there

should be Kells or
at least Stingaree. They have
they tell me a mission.

IV. For Me

I descend to the pit.
It is nothing
Dante or Pynchon prepared
me or anyone else for.

It is enormous &
full of sand. Small figure
in that landscape, I can’t
ski on sand.

Above, big, tipping over,
an enormous granite monolith.

The ski lift operator
tells me it is a big old

rock, but I know
a monolith when I see one.

V. The Monolith

Closely guarded . . . troopers with guns
Black Copters . . .
Ski Patrol . . .

The Monolith
looms miles above, still,
tipping overhead.

VI.

A mumbling gnome
prophecies a brilliant future
& shows me the ladder, not
up the monolith, up the wall
(of the pit) not quite
miles high, but nearly.


VII. Back to the house.

They are still here, with
the same offer, although not quite at
such good pay. There is
only one last question . . . “Do

you still believe
in global warming?”