gimme shelter

A Bellwether

the arctic ice shelf
disappearing
into an indifferent ocean

a sign
some say
of a coming cataclysm

but the end of this world
is as far north of my thoughts
as the calving glaciers in prudhoe bay

even more earthshaking,
eventual
inevitable
concussive

the reality of my mother and father
picking out cemetery plots
on an unusually cool day in august

my world,
a sea rising
a desert expanding
a coastline receding