Summer Storms

Last year
I thought more about the politics
of global warming and Muslim women
in their scarves and their Jilbabs.
How they must feel like
they're living through one long summer night
of laying in front of a fan,
wishing for a sudden storm.

And brevity.
I thought alot about briefness,
about living out fewer plans,
of saying everything in smaller words.
I love you. I hear you. I'm sorry.
How everyone I touched seemed to be ticking.
but whether it was a clock or a bomb,
I can't tell you and maybe there's no difference.

But less.
Less about passing scenery,the men
who made me cry twenty-five years ago, the size
I left behind with each son's birth,
and less of thinlipped drop-ins who touched down
on my sofa, between laundry
cats, and library books
about building storm shelters.

So this year
I'm thinking about writing
small poems about women in jilbabs, global
bombs and clocks and warming books,
and leaving scenery to the drop-ins
who need to learn what it is to wait
in the dark for change.