my neighbor describes today's
air, the thick late spring
damp that lately fogs
our mornings and brains, demands
attention to veiled
shapes and thoughts, attends
our gardens, breakfast meetings,
grade norming sessions.
so thick that normal
breathing seems an act of will,
this l'air du temps means
exactly this: we
are doomed. wisconsin charters,
chicago layoffs,
offhand remarks on
the michigan statehouse floor.
pigs get fat, hogs get
slaughtered, and we get
another reminder that
the center will not
hold, the only truth
a smothering paradigm
engineered by the
same folks who bypass
science to deny that spring
is forever changed--
forever itself
a horizon that now seems
closer than the air
increasingly
difficult
to breathe.
Ugh. We had that kind of weather last week (and the air conditioner broke, just so we'd remember that its role is to remove humidity as well as heat).
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, the feeling is an all-too-apt metaphor for the cumulative effect of education "reform" (of course, a train speeding off a cliff, while the engineers insist they're only "disrupting," or perhaps practicing "creative destruction," also works. The temptation to jump off is sometimes strong.)
Wow, these are always good, but this is really powerful. Nicely done. You've got a knack for this! I always enjoy seeing a new one.
ReplyDeleteThanks!
As if grade norming sessions weren't stifling enough on their own... Beautifully done, Greta!
ReplyDeleteThis neatly encapsulates a lot of what I have been feeling the past few years here in Cheeseheadland, where Governor Dickbag and his merry band of goptards have been steadily dismantling everything that made this state a good place to live and raise a family (in spite of the shitty weather 8 months out of the year). Most of us are sad, and a lot of us have stopped trying to fight it. I've been seeing a therapist for a year, and it is helping only because I am learning, to paraphrase TS Eliot, how not to care.
ReplyDeleteThanks for posting.
"goptards" is pretty special.
DeleteProfoundly sobering. I lurve your poems, Greta.
ReplyDeleteTake heart, Greta, none of my conservative relatives in Connecticut took issue with climate change this year. That's because they'd taken too much of a pasting by Superstorm Sandy. My nephew, who's a hedge-fund manager, had a large maple tree in his yard snap in half, with the upper half rolling uphill like a tumbleweed into the house, breaking $800 worth of windows. That, and both Tom Coburn and Jim Inhofe are now both in the doghouse, with tornadoes ravaging their state and their voters wondering where's the disaster assistance. I'd invite you to move to Fresno, where we faculty organized and put a stop to our provost's stupid plans to break up our College of Science and Mathematics and our College of Arts and Humanities, but my girlfriend would get jealous. (Just don't move to Cal State LA, which is where the provost is now moving to, as president.)
ReplyDelete