Climate Change

Cold from the glass
beats on my forearms: the winter sun is
pooled but helpless. A failed brightness.

The breathing of the sky is deep, settled, old:
it ebbs and flows through weakness in the walls,
it drags across my blanched and lifted hairs

too slow for gooseflesh, too fast
for comfort. If it seizes the awnings a moment,
and shakes them, like a person folding sheets,

remember: it has no wish 
for completion. There is nothing 
it will stow or lay to rest. That is not its job.

That is what we are for, why we were brought
from the Rift 
to flood this grieving planet at the last;

we are here to fold what trembles, 
smooth it, lay it down in lavender,
before the shivering altogether stops.