It’s 45 and raining, the kind of cold
that makes you flinch if not cry out,
that leads you to quarantine and call it
a boycott of the world, to swaddle
yourself in righteous indignation and
seek comfort in the nursery of night—
as if, stomping your legs like the giraffes
you saw on a sunny afternoon at the
Santa Barbara Zoo, tall and graceful and
able to kill with one indifferent kick,
you could subdue man’s instinct to
destroy, convince the greedy that a kiss
is worth more than your bones, hair, and hide.

No, I haven’t time to tally the fading light
or read the latest forecast: I know how much
water the Thwaites glacier holds, have a
doctorate in Apocalypse. If I stay home
any longer, grinding my teeth until all
I can chew is lettuce from the hands of
children, the zookeeper who, after a bad day,
lets the sun out of its cage will hang himself
from a tree he didn’t mean to let die.

Who then would touch their torch to the sky,
bring down a raw, pure flame—
make light of so much devastation?