LIGHTNING STRIKES©

WEATHER PANE

August:

a warm morning and the truck starts easily

proceeding into a cloudy day

that looks and smells like rain

August:

on last night's news:

torrential rains

“incredible”

according to the Weather Channel

Detroit flooded with five feet of water

a hurricane on the Pacific coast of Mexico

shirtless surfers at Santa Cruz

water seven degrees above average

weatherman Paul Deanno reports:

“We don't know what's happening.”

his role

where everyone is an actor

is contradicted

weather people always know what's happening

but consider:

every person is a stage

a man from time to time

can be a father or a warrior

a woman mother or seductress

yet men must not murder their children

nor women seduce them

one person – many roles?

normal, and why not?

as fate would have it

each person is a throng

the compaction of a throng into a person

brings contradictions

settled by a Director

except in those plays where actors emulate

people who don't know what's happening

which sometimes happens anyhow

and if that seems confusing

well, so is the weather

where we began

switching rapidly from hail to heat waves

offends our sense of normalcy

if the performance is a melee

the script was not followed

but wait . . .

whose script?

and roles subordinated to whom or what?

do we simply experience weather

or are we participants?

where fossil fuel brings climate change

the personal stage steps onto the world stage

and vice versa

CARMA

the events of the day taken one at a time

are perhaps solvable

bring them on all at once

and the problem seems boundless

completely out of hand

say you're driving the freeway

a call comes in

your daughter's husband has turned blue

a cement truck just ahead is spitting gravel

and the accelerator gets stuck

well, life is suffering

but that doesn't fix the accelerator

and don't forget the oil change you forgot

the engine burns up

so much for the accelerator

well, one less thing . . .