by Edie Meade
A haze slates the sky, clays the sun. I saw it like this last summer when the fires out west sent smoke all the way to Chemical Valley in West Virginia, and we all thought the same thing then, that it was the chemical plant. Now the air is more acrid, smoke-like but not smoke. It is mothball in the wool coats of our grandfathers. I goosebump but not from cold – from indecision, from a metal taste on the tongue, a tarnished spoon of air. It is a bad medicine. What do they make at the plant, chemicals for the production of other chemicals? Pesticide, herbicide, death formulas. Do I grab my phone, video the mineraling sky? It is a ritual of adults to bear witness to disaster. I shift foot to foot in the threshold of the screen door like Dad used to do during storms, when we cried for him to get into the basement. But this morning the birds are silent and so are my children and nobody cries for me.
