Paradise

Climate change: shut down the government,
who needs it? Return to frontier days,
wear a holster full of lead and fire,
work the wife to death having children
doing whatever else needs to be done
the husband can’t or doesn’t want to do
after all he does mere mortals cannot do.

It’s time America came back to its senses.
Remember the tree felled across Mill River
in the hurricane of 1938 in our backyard,
North Amherst, in the most desperate years
we lived, too young for two so old. Too many
lovers. Too much everything. Still, it’s a body
takes the wheel and drives us on to Paradise.

(26 August 2011)