Something I Keep Forgetting

There is barbecuing somewhere nearby, filling the air with the smells of lighter fluid and cheap cuts of meat. The afternoon hangs out like a good-looking lout, free of ambition, content to lean against a tree and be looked at. I'll watch it fade and wither into dusk. Nobody here does anything interesting. It's always the same stuff, week after week as the season wears away and the leaves, dryer and dryer, crackle louder and louder underfoot. The leaves now sound like my joints feel. I try not to step on them.

I doze off and go running across a field where the dry grass shoots out seeds with loud pops, the arid vegetable eroticism of late summer now approaching its peak. I have the feeling I'm going somewhere, but the doze ends and I snap awake in my dull chair, the gathered heat belying the liquid light that ripples across the floor like the ghost of a cool stream. This time of year is full of lies. Never trust it.

( Sunday Verse )