The difficulty

I am trying to figure out the future,
but you understand the difficulty.

I stand at the window and stare at the rigs
on skinny stilts in the middle of the bay,
at the marks made by thin wading birds
lifting into the cloudy distance.

Some of my questions
about what will happen relate
to the past and the present—
For instance, as my mother used to say,

how the kind of bed I made
determines what I get to sleep in.
I’ve figured out there’s a certain amount
of choice possible— pillows and sheets

can be changed, the whole bed itself
might be sold or donated. But there’s no way
to know how or when the floor might dissolve
and the waters overtake us, what to do

when we wake in the middle of the night,
all edges drenched by lapping water.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.