*Note: I wrote this earlier in the summer. We are having a bizarre and welcome cool front, with 10 straight days of rain. Never in my 45 years has it rained on the first day of school.
“To see the summer sky is poetry.”
Emily Dickinson
Ms. Dickinson lived in New England. This fine August
morning it is 59 degrees in Amherst. Should be a balmy
81.
Here, in Texas, we won’t see that kind of weather
till October.
You can write poetry about a summer sky
in the Lone Star state but it will mention how the sun
hurts at triple digits, how the grass is burned brown,
how you need a cool cup of water at 6 a.m.
after walking the dogs. How at the pool,
you swim for the shady spot where the water is still slightly
cool. How you long for just one cloud. How the best
poetry is a sudden thunderstorm whacking you awake
out of heat-filled stupor, into the street
where your neighbors are out, celebrating summer.
