Two Summers

While politicians debate, deny, and discredit scientific proof of global warming, the rest of us simply observe our world. In southeast Alaska we typically experience a long winter and a fleeting spring. Summer visits briefly, and then an early autumn begins its cold and rainy push into another winter.

But today, driving to town, we passed patch after patch of bright dandelions and purple-blue lupine blooming in the median. In the middle of October, another summer.

                  blazing sun
                  the buyers of that ugly house
                  cut down the trees that hid it