Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head


by E. Alan Meece
UU Band of Writers essays by E. Alan Meece
for meeting of Nov.10, 2024
prompt: Raindrops keep falling on my head

Raindrops keep falling on my head. My eyes see the nation turning red. A lot more needs to be said, at least before I go to bed. I write instead of crying. I sing and play and put in some links to the music instead of sighin’.

Can I stop the rain by complainin’? Maybe we can all do some of that. The rain pours down, the wind howls, the trees burn, the heat wilts and dries, the crops dry out. Rain doesn’t look much different from sparks. Who’ll stop the acid rain?

Donald Trump will supply cloud seeding. He will turn the faucet up. People will lose their homes, their cars will float away. Nowhere will be safe from his operations. We didn’t complain, we voted for it. We voted for him to give us more and more rain. A flood of bullets to be sprayed too, in our neighborhoods and schools killing children and shoppers and theater goers. We’ll see more of that too. And we'll see more war too. Who'll stop the wars?

Will we complain? How many deaths does it take till we know that too many people have died? Will we complain? How many times can a man look up and not see the rain? Burned once; how many more times will we let them burn us again? How many more times, treatin' us they way they want to do? We complain, the rain stops, the nation turns blue, but then we go quiet again, and so the rain starts again, and our eyes see the map turn red again. Over and over again, like a carbon cycle. Ice ages, then warming periods. And the ice ages are longer. The rain waters ice over. Our lives ice over. Everything and everyone gets cold and ices over. We suffer. Then we start to complain, and the cycle turns, the carbon is released, and we vote to end the rain, and we get warm again. And then we feel fine, but we forget again, and too much carbon is released. We stop complaining too. So the rains come again. We get fooled again and again and again. The ice men cometh again. Cycle after cycle. The cycles turn and we never learn. We forget how to stop the rain. We vote to forget, and our national map turns red again. This time I didn’t need a weatherman; I knew the rain was coming. I knew which way the political winds were blowin’. My umbrella was ready. My tears fell on it anyway.

Now its coming in torrents this time. Now the land may never turn blue again, and we’ll all be turning blue coming up for air. We may not get another chance to complain. We are reaching tipping points. The rain may never stop. We are waist deep in the big muddy, and the big fools just say to keep pushing on. We keep voting to forget. We stop complaining. So the rain does not stop. The rains come, the floods come, the rivers rise, the seas rise, the fires come, the droughts come, and the heat comes. Rain in many flavors; it’s all the same. I see the bad moon rising. We’re on the eve of destruction. The Hard Rain's a Fallin! Gimme shelter! Now the flood is rising over above our heads, and we are sinking. Not just raindrops on our heads anymore. We’re about to drown.


The Carbon Cycle

The Fourth Turning cycle

The Tipping Points in the Climate Crisis by Climate Brief

Tipping points in the climate system