Climate Change

by Julie Rosenzweig

Work, once a steady stream, is now either slow drip or

unmanageable gush. During lulls, your once-pinging inbox

hushed to life-support blip, you have time to sit by the window

overlooking the wadi, ponder the end of the Mediterranean

climate as you knew it. Mug of decaf in hand – caffeine no longer

your friend – you try to recall when exactly the wadi greened last

year, and the year before. Before Hanukkah, surely? Surely it wasn’t

(like this year) a greybrown smear of desiccation to the end

of winter break, the children enjoying a second summer while you

waited, and waited some more. (Kids barely around except for vacations,

another instance of drip/gush.) Now when the rains finally come you

doubt them, no longer easing into a season of lushness but steeling

yourself against its precipitate end, the end of precipitation.

* * * * *

Julie Rosenzweig is a Jerusalem-based translator, librarian, and mom. Her work has appeared in Literary Mama, Eunoia Review, the antiBODY poetry anthology, and the Times of Israel, among others.