2 Minutes. Go!

The rain is steady, a monotony, washing away the sins of the city, sweeping them out to sea. Inside, dockers pants and nice skirts bitch about the weather, the flooding, the fact that the ground won't absorb the water. Well, who's fucking fault is that, California? How about the rest of the 49...you guys like fresh produce? Our land has been raped to provide it. Fertile soil turned to hard pack clay. Strip farming, but we don't call it that. 

Leave that to the miners. 

We're in a predicament. These rains are necessary. They will also birth disasters. Roads collapsing. Homes washing away. Wildfires next fall. I can't even go fishing without worrying about red tide and refuse. My daughters have never seen a full splay of stars. 

Maybe they never will. 

It's a failing. My failing, your failing. 

Everybody is failing, flailing. 

I'll just sit by the window, watch the rain, think about the changes that I have seen in 45 years. There have been a lot when you really think about it. Insect populations down. Rising tides. Hotter temps. Fewer birds in the sky. 

I saw a murmuration of starlings the other day. Maybe a couple hundred. Made me wonder what it looked like back when birds could turn the sky black. 

Go ahead, though. Keep recycling. Use paper straws. I'm sure it's the hundreds of straws I've used in my life and not the egregious appetites of corporate oil, Dupont, chemical plants. I'm sure that the poison runoff has everything to do with the aluminum can I put in the trash. 

I'm not trying to absolve myself. I suck, too. 

Just ask the fish.