(But We Can Change Its Course)
Another storm is spinning in the Caribbean – this one named Melissa.
She’s gathering power over warm water that should have cooled months ago,
breathing in the heat we’ve poured into the air,
and exhaling it back as wind.
The headlines will call her a “natural disaster,”
but let’s be honest – there’s nothing natural about what we’ve done to the planet’s lungs.
We’ve rewritten the weather.
We’ve made chaos the new climate.
Every coal train, every idle engine, every vote cast for convenience
is a whisper in the storm’s ear,
a subtle invitation to dance closer to our shores.
We didn’t start the fire –
but we fanned it.
We didn’t summon the hurricane –
but we’ve kept the water warm.
Still, this isn’t a sermon of guilt.
It’s a reminder of power – of cause and effect,
of how a single act of care,
a single change of habit,
a single human ripple
can echo all the way to the beach.
Because the butterfly effect is real,
and love – radical love – is the only force that multiplies the same way destruction does.
So let Hurricane Melissa be our teacher.
Let her remind us that the ocean remembers,
that the atmosphere listens,
and that nothing – no act, no purchase, no silence – is without consequence.
When she howls, let her also sing:
Everything is connected. Everything is changeable. Everything we do matters.
And may we answer her not with despair,
but with devotion –
to this fragile, fierce, still-beautiful world
that keeps giving us another chance to do better. 🌍💙
— The Radical Left