Another storm threatens to come in,
feeling my responsibility
for uncaring
and unresponsive history

Fearing you
more than loving us

Setting out your pails
and plastic tubs
to catch cold
and dreary drips

Impaled remembering
past wet enemies
becoming darker spots
as moisture threatens,
building mold untold
as yet
by angry lips

Dripping windowed frames
and ceiling fixtures
of your felt losses
not equally carried
by more comforted me
opaque with tender crosses

Buried
in how lonely
love can feel
hidden in Earth’s evolving top,
improbable to see

Our together threatening
leaky roof may drown,
which you would have fixed
some months ago,
if you could do so
on your own.

This storm pauses
and brighter rays suggest
a sun still shining
behind dark uncivil distress

Clouds could uncover
our disassociation,
poor and hovering
coveting a sun-drenched nation

Calculating our cost in cash,
but not in minds and bodies
to stop stormy smothers
of inside raining
draining issues,
deep core tissues
thundering crash

Warning we must get this done
before another wild wet storm
fearing you
more than loving us,
undone

Darker clouds build to leak again
while I explain why
you still can’t trust me
to invest in unstormed peace

A contenting roof
unconditionally done

So all EarthTribe
can safely put away our pails
and nails,
defensive weapons,
buckets,
overflowing pans
and spans of climate panic

Now rumbling receding thunder
of fearing you
more than loving us

Turns toward replacing damaged health,
repriming stains repainting wealth
of more warmly wild respect
while together musing
about who is bare surviving
and is not thriving
with what prestorming care,

Remembering who is dry
and fair
and prosperous
and why
we fear this tragic storm
more than loving weathered warm.