This Then

[rejectomorph]

Milkiness has returned to the sky, with hazy clouds blurring the sunlight but doing nothing to reduce the heat. No rain in those vaporous smears, I think, but should they linger into dark they might make night more sultry than it would be in their absence. Bright hours pass, the air unstirred by any trace of breeze, the leaves briefly trembling only when a bird lands on their branch. I stay in the house, windows shut, and drapes too on the sunny side of the building, I'm waiting for evening to liberate me. The birds flying free tolerate the heat and I feel a bit of envy.

Maybe it will be that even before sunset the house will grow so stuffy and warm that the outside by comparison won't seem the torrid hell it does now. Then I'll go out and sit on the shady back porch and sweat while listening to the crickets who occupy the dense shade under the shrubs and are always the first to begin chirping. Even at that my head will remain as hazy as the sky. It's always this way in this season now. I can try to recall how it once was when I could remain in the heat all day and shrug at the discomfort. I'm glad now I did not know then that it would come to this.



Sunday Verse

Talking

by W.S. Merwin


Whatever I talk about is yesterday
by the time I see anything it is gone
the only way I can see today
is as yesterday

I talk with words I remember
about what has already happened
what I want to talk about is no longer there
it is not there

today I say only what I remember
even when I am speaking of today
nobody else remembers what I remember
not even the same names

I tell parts of a story
that once occurred
and I laugh with surprise at what disappeared
though I remember it so well