Wherever we are now

This house is cool and quiet.

with swallows under the eves

and a soft green garden outside each window.

Somewhere else

oil slides onto the shore

creeping into the tiny secret spaces

between feather barbs,

between grains of sand.

Somewhere else

Daddy will never come home from the coal mine,

Daddy will never come home from Iraq,

Daddy will never fish those waters again.

Somewhere else the deluge washed the house away.

That place wasn’t a flood zone, the people said,

but everywhere is a flood zone if it rains enough, and

they were happy to save the baby pictures.

Somewhere else,

somewhere in Africa,

five year old children

have never seen rain.

The sea road washes out,

the fish swim north,

and old farmers stand baffled in an unknown season called change.

Everywhere,

even here outside this cool and quiet house,

the air is changed.

This is not is not far in the future.

This is not somewhere else.

This is you and me.

Wherever we are now.