This week, as I watched the sky turn ash orange,
saw the air quality ticker go red, purple, maroon,

glimpsed two construction workers exchanging soft blue masks 
under the dusky morning moon,

witnessed my children sink into the couch—
“Not this again!” my son raged, hazel eyes hot with tears—

I wondered if I’d loved enough, risked enough for this earth, 
which is clearly raging back at us all,

how my son would sit under the desk during remote learning,
fists red as beets, biting his nails till they bled.

Last night, I dreamt again about losing my kids in a surge 
of stormy black water, the levees failing again, again.

I dreamt and dreamt until I had to push myself out of the dream 
so I could walk through the dense summer morning

with you, the two of us catching our breaths 
as the sky swelled, finally, with rain—

oh the blue blue sky in all its merciful radiance.

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Wendy Wisner is the author of three books of poems, most recently The New Life (Cornerstone Press/University of Wisconsin Stevens-Point). Her essays and poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, Spoon River Review, The Washington Post, Lilith Magazine, and elsewhere.