One.
The weather had been unsettled
for the past several weeks.
In fact, it had been downright weird.
The clouds seemed thicker and heavier.
Still white, but glowering.
And updrafts were terrible!
Every time you swept up a pile of dirt
it was immediately blown into the sky.
Dust devils were everywhere, sucking up trash
like vacuum cleaners and
throwing around lawn furniture.
The sun would come out and it would
rain. The clouds would cover the
sky and the heat was unbearable.
Like a sauna.
The New York Times said it was
'Global Warming on a Rampage.'
Fox News commentators blamed it
on Johnny Depp somehow.
The old lady next door to me
called it 'The Harrowing of Hell.'
But she was nuttier than a fruitcake.
All in all, the weather appeared to
be up to something.
Something beyond the ken
of meteorology.
It had its own purpose
and I felt cold hostility
against me and my kind.
Two
Then it started to snow.
In June.
But the snow drifted down
to the ground and immediately
sprang back up again into the
sky.
It didn't stay and melt.
And when it stopped snowing
the sun stayed behind a haze.
And the haze took shape
as mountains and lakes,
valleys and rivers,
vast plains and dark
green pine forests.
Up in the sky.
Upside down from us.
The old lady next door
said it was a new heaven
and a new earth.
I didn't know what to think.
When scientists trained their
telescopes on it, there was
nothing there to see.
The Air Force sent jet fighters
into the floating mountains
and rivers, but the planes flew
right through them as if they
were mirages.
Which, I guess, they were.
You could see them clearly with
the naked eye,
but not with a dead telescope.
A new land, an imaginary place,
a far apparitional country,
uncharted and unpeopled.
We took to sitting outside
all day long, looking up at
the new landscape, waiting
to see what would develop.
Gradually it grew closer to us,
almost touching the skyscrapers
downtown.
And then birds and animals
appeared up in the cloud lands.
There were zebras and toucans,
running and flying right above our heads.
I thought they looked sleepy and
discontented.
Three
The new world above was silent.
And no odors drifted down. No scent
of dung or blossoms.
Then one day people began
walking around up there.
They looked and dressed just like us.
Young and old. Male and female.
I shouted myself hoarse trying to
make contact with them.
So did others. We sent up rockets.
But they ignored us, going about
their otherworldly business.
Until the day they began to send
down their message to us.
The day the orange circus peanuts
began falling on us. On the land
and the sea.
Reeking of banana oil, each circus
peanut was inscribed with
'Go back to where you came from.'
The soft candies piled up, choking
rivers, blocking highways, poisoning
the oceans as fish sickened on the
dissolved corn syrup and pectin.
Our earth was being smothered.
By a mirage. By strangers.
By our doppelgangers.
"Why?" I sobbed at the last,
as the circus peanuts pushed in
my windows and the front door.
"Why are you doing this to us?"
"We were here first, so where can
we go back to?"
Their silence remained unbroken,
but the circus peanuts stopped falling.
And I started a chiasmus and chant,
until the crazy old lady next door called
the cops to complain about the noise.
