October 2015
I worked more than 30 years as an engineering editor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Roles before academia included psychiatric tech/caseworker and nursing home evaluator. My most recent poems arise within that perplexing space between informed pessimism and dubious hope. Humor often lurks nearby.
As the Permafrost Goes
Hens will lay eggs hard-boiled,
cows produce pasteurized milk,
and fish bob up, grilled to perfection.
Veggies will pre-steam in the garden,
tea water constantly boil,
and cigarettes light by themselves.
Winters will be clothing-optional,
ski slopes retrofitted into zany
mudslides, and igloos and polar bears
rendered N/A. As the permafrost goes,
people will ask why it took so long,
given so little effort required,
for global warming to snowball.
But we'll have what we wanted:
a post-tropical paradise where life
is a rotisserie of delights with sin
forever moot: why fear Hell, having
come to enjoy its temperature?
©2015 Darrell Petska