San Francisco Climate Clues, June 21, 2022

On a recent business trip to San Francisco, of course I wrote a climate poem:

San Francisco Climate Clues, June 21, 2022

In Hotel Caza painting, room 418,
orange octopus tentacles reach up
thousands of feet
under Golden Gate Bridge

like Nature making COVID-19,  BA.4, BA.5,
Atlantic and Gulf Coast hurricanes, fires,
heatwaves, ice melt, sea rise, dead corals
disrupting lives and livelihoods.

Later, in a nearby coffee shop
two men lament how Paradise, California,
will never be paradise again
in our lifetimes.

A nude woman walks to me
on a hot sidewalk above Fisherman’s Wharf
as news reports 92 degrees,
and Santa Rosa 104.

I worry about her young soles
and paws of various dogs
scampering behind
oblivious owners.

My Uber driver says about the woman,
“Yes, that happens here
when people are so drugged
they don’t know what they’re doing.”

Outside delicious Beloved Café
a man quietly sings to himself
so no one else
can hear the words.

Across town, a homeless man grasps
a screwdriver like a dagger
until I see
it’s for protection.

I recall the 1959 film On the Beach
when a calm, resigned Gregory Peck
allows a submarine crewman to escape
to a nuclear-doomed San Francisco.

“Is there anything you want before we go?” Peck asks.
“I’m okay,” the crewman replies.
“We won’t be coming back,” Peck continues,
to hear “I know.”

Someday soon
when fish belly up in real life,
birds drop,
and many stare in blank reflection,

as long as I can reduce
suffering of one being
my life has meaning.

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For his brutal honesty, I added UN Secretary-General António Guterres of Portugal to my "Updated Best Practices for Climate Crisis." Similarly, now is a good time to read, or listen to, Bob Dylan's 5 June, 2017 NOBLE Lecture if you haven't.