Steven Schroeder | You don't need a weatherman
Oh my name it is nothin’
My age it means less
The country I come from
Is called the Midwest
-Bob Dylan
Weather in Seattle leads conversation to the country
we come from, what a difference miles make
between Chicago and Waukesha in Winter, jobs.
That’s why the driver
is here. Bad times are worse
in the Midwest, he says.
An African accent, but I can’t place it,
and we go no further than Wisconsin
before politics, the subject of my neighborhood
everywhere these days. You must be proud, he says.
Yes, I say, of course, and think not Kenyan. Not
happy with appointments, but proud, yes.
And we will see. He says everybody
cheats on their taxes and I say
it’s not taxes. It’s war.
I’m a Muslim, he says, and I
think we need more men.
I’m a pacifist, I say
(thinking, now, Nigerian, but also Sudan),
and I don’t think we need another war.
I’m a pacifist too, he says. And I,
then why another war?
It’s the only thing they
understand. The Taliban
is coming back and they
are selling drugs. There comes
a time. There comes a time. There
comes a time. And I,
there always comes a time,
and everyone in every war thinks
their time right. And I
recall the Russians, and I
recall the British, their
times. We don’t go as far
as Genghis Khan, but weather
in Seattle could get us there.
He has a student loan to pay,
a daughter six years old,
and he’s thinking he may
enlist. It’s either that or back to school.
School or the army, I laugh, a tough choice, but stay
out of the army, thinking all the while how much alike they are,
how little separates Seattle weather from one more young man
in arms. The fare is lower than I expect, and I add something
extra. Stay out of the army. And then I add I guess
that’s not enough to keep you out, but consider
it my small contribution. We laugh. And I
say I’ll be back
in two years to pick
this conversation up again
if some war someone thinks
good has not taken him by then.
Seattle
February 2009
