Daffodils before the snow

Daffodils before the snow comes
In an early April in a disrupted spring
Remind me of how old age
Has changed since my grandmother
And I sat on the front steps
Discussing the passage of time.

She spoke of time speeding up
As one grew older, while I
At eight stared at her white hair
And wondered what she meant.
Today I know the whirling of the year
As time flies by.

But I do not know the turning
Of the seasons as she did
That summer long ago.
The repeating familiar patterns
Of weather with but few
Odd storms to add some spice.

She is long gone, my parents too,
And the pattern of the seasons fled
Before the onslaught of the warming air
And seas.
We live with weather generated by
The randomizing wheel of fate.

And sometimes I grieve.
But mostly I endure.

Change is a tidal wave

Change is a tidal wave
For which we try to build
An infrastructure of hope.
Or…we despair and cling
To pieces of the past
In vain hope that they will save us.

When the change pioneer
And the change denier live
Together…chaos may ensue.
Surfing this wave
And saving what we can
Means letting go, a task more suited
For an Amazon than a Hercules.