Greenhouse

Greenhouse

They say the world

is getting hotter,

the ice caps

melting, receding

like my father's hairline

with its

widow's peak,

the oceans

are rising up

to cover Miami,

L.A., New York and, of

course,

all the places

people go

to get a good,

natural,

carcinogenic tan

like the brown spots

that started popping up

all around

that widow's peak

simply because my father

spent too much time

coaching in West Texas

without a cap

No use in moralizing

about the evils

of coaching

of sun

of melting ice caps

of drowning women,

children, men,

works of art,

architecture,

people will do

what people find to do

in the immediate,

things that have no

consequence

at the moment

or are consequential

only

to whomever happens along

next,

but, I wasn't going

to moralize---

No, let the Atlantic rise,

the Pacific,

all seven of them,

I live in

South Dakota

and my father's head

down in Texas

has gone almost

white

as a snow cap

and only some spots

are malignant, only some

acts

have consequences

we can measure,

at least while we're still alive.