Heat Wave

The assault is ferocious, the Earth itself
plunged into a universal heat-storm of
such broad proportions and steaming
depth not only do animals slaver for surcease
so too does vegetation in forest and garden
assailed by the overpowering sensation of
plunging into a fiery oven, bare wisps of
wind merely shifting the flames of heat
in an indiscernible mimicry of relief, the
cruel mockery exacerbating the trap that
nature has devised in her never-ending game
of launching surprises on an unwary audience.
It is as though nature convinced the great
Sahara to surrender a portion of its hellish
and inexhaustible store of torrid excess
as sensate creatures fly, crawl, slither and
march in search of moderation, their very
survival dependent on escaping the flaming
torch that their environment has become in a
hostile-to-endurance and life itself appearance 
of a climate suddenly transitioned to reflect 
the heat-explosive surface of the sun that 
very gaseous star endowing us with life.