The Oven Of This Day

The atmosphere on this mid-summer
day is stiflingly oppressive. Yet a warm
breeze ameliorates the closeness, bringing
some relief from the intolerable heat. A
figment of our overheated imaginations.
Truth is no cooling effect even at night.
This long, heat-exceptional few weeks has
been enervating to the extreme. Even plants
are gasping for relief; annuals curling
in withered dismay, their petals bruised.

The forested canopy in the ravine offers
shelter from the flame-hot sun. The creek
below runs muddy, distressed by area
dogs plunging into its mean depths,
running dry to a bare trickle, despite
last night's rain that barely impacted
the gasping-dry woods. Birdsong is
muted on the heavily-cloistered air.

People exit their air-conditioned homes
and vehicles to wave, pass comment,
exchange exhausted views. One, praising
the cloying humidity and searing heat, his
shirt clinging darkly wet to his overfed chest.
If God listens to his wishes, he chimes, then
he alone is responsible for this glorious
weather he so much enjoys. So go, enjoy.

Heat wave, torpor, languid, desultory, heat-
fatigued: others pass mutual groans of apathetic
weather-disaffection, commiserating with one
another at the brutality of Nature's excesses.
From backyards ring the high-pitched voices
of children being drenched by cooling waters.
No street games for them these days, but
water immersion, and that never to excess.