Hotter than a pistol.  Microwaving
us on Nuke.  Egg fries on the walk!  
Hi from Summer, down Carolina way.  
Gasping creek up front  beyond life
support.  Red clay drained to muck
brown, muck brown to a sickly gray.
Gray fast giving in to dirt-jacketed
rock.  What?  What do you mean,
you can't get warm?  Say you went
out with damp hair, now your head
could be a rink for Lilliputians to
skate? What is going on?  Did NASA
flunkies brave I-95 to come arrange
for me to be shot behind SputnikXYZ?
Wait.  Hazy, but I believe I just might
recall,  "Honey, our world just shrunk."
"Folks pitched in.  Even used the 'net.  
Not family yet,  but getting there."
Something about borders blurring
and shifting.  Miles not being the miles
they were?  Right about one thing.  
Months have pssted to days, days to
nanoseconds.  Nanoseconds shrinking
to units Lilliputian brains such as mine
push away. All kinds of places are
melting pots.  And I forgot??   Old
habits die hard. my only excuse.  Wrote  
like a jingoist, I apologize.  Neither I
nor this land I love is The Center.  
End-all-be-all, whatever. Never was,
but now we know.  U.S. is turning to
Us.  This is a good -- no, very good --
thing.  Out with They/Them.  No more
You/Us.  Problems-?  Do we have
problems?!!!!  Nothing's simple, like
we'd like.  Hot here/freeze there;
blizzard here/typhoon there.  But we
are homo sapiens!  Ours is the race that
invented AC!   Anoraks and stoves.   
Big-We on the way, I just know,
              to P E A C E.

              (c) Phyllis Jean Green, 2008