Sometimes I feel like the voice of reason, standing on a street corner
in one hundred and eleven degree fire weather:
“Floodwaters don’t come
because of Mardi Gras or gay marriage.
There is no deity in the sky, anger white-hot
and scalding. There is only the sun, distant and warm,
its beams slinking through ozone, rooting brown roses
to our forearms and faces.
Stop looking for locusts; any warning you perceive
is the earth’s murmuring: ‘I am not God or Pele.
I will not throw you into the crater and watch you
burn. I am the voice in your head, humming in key
with downed power lines: Something is wrong.
Who is to blame? I am not to blame.
I have done nothing.‘”
08/28/11