The Myth of Separation

In elevators, supermarkets, & restaurants
across the nation, total strangers
feel compelled to talk about the weather.
Sometimes frightened from the facts of it:
how tornados now touch down in Scarsdale
and New Hampshire, how the winter’s
warmth supports the spread of Lyme’s.
Or argumentative: it’s not because of
Human greed these things are happening, or
It is. These conversations: are they
the secondary gains of climate change,
a resurrection of the dying human instinct
to survive by holding hands while crossing streets,
or huddling together through the chill of night, or
eating potluck-style to maximize slim rations?