09:30 PM, Eastern Daylight Time, St. Albans, West Virginia, USA.

Here, it’s 65º. Perfect sleeping weather.
In Cusco it’s 48º.
It’s 66º in Kiev.
At 9:30 in the morning it’s already 81º in Qingdao.
46 in Soweto.
75 in Tehran.
In Jerusalem, it’s 73.

Some are sitting at their computer.
Some are sleeping.
Some can’t sleep, worried about tomorrow.
This one is lonely.
Another is scraping together loose change for a drink.
A mother is worried about her son.
A father goes to work at his second job.
A child is very sick.
A boy meets a girl, and the world stops.

If it rains tomorrow, I can’t work.
If it doesn’t rain soon, the beans will die.
If it rains tomorrow, there will surely be floods.
If it doesn’t rain, the fires will rage.
If it rains tomorrow, we’ll dance in the puddles.
If it doesn’t rain, I’ll skip school.
If it rains tomorrow, I won’t have to walk to the well.
If it doesn’t rain, I’ll wear my new shoes.

Tomorrow we will rise.
We will go to work.
We will drink coffee.
No one will ask us what to do about
bombs,
or missiles,
or cyber warfare,
or identity theft,
or human trafficking,
or hunger,
or climate change.
Our world is small.
We just need to know if it’s going to rain.

copyright 2017, joseph e bird