If Wishes Were Horses I'd Be Knee-Deep in Dung

Last night I forgot to open the living room windows before I fell asleep, so I didn't get to take advantage of the coolest night in a week to chill the house. Instead I woke up in a warm, stuffy room shortly after dawn and had only an hour or so to have them open before I had to close them against the day's growing heat. I also forgot to wash the dishes, turn off the computer, or clean the cat's litter box. My brain was braised.

Tomorrow is to be much hotter, and it's going to top 100 degrees for three days running. Worse yet, Sunday and Monday nights will stay in the 70s, so it's going to be quite hellish around here. I'll have the choice of roasting or going broke running the air conditioner. It's times like this that I most miss living closer to the ocean.

Grocery shopping tomorrow, and I'm certainly not looking forward to going out into that furnace. On the other hand, the stores do provide air conditioning at a lower temperature than I can afford at home, so the greatest misery will be coming and going. Maybe I'll shop very slowly. I usually try to get through the stores as quickly as possible, but tomorrow would be a good time to make an exception.

Ah, for an afternoon at the beach.

Limits

Once the house gets cooler I'm apt to fall asleep. Maybe I'll dream about the breeze I wish would blow, or water flowing in the streams that have dried up far too soon this year. Maybe I'll dream about once having dozed on a beach, protected from the fierce sun by the shade of an oversized umbrella. Maybe I'll dream about the deserted suburban streets I used to wander by night many summers past.

Things no longer here probably haunt my dreams, but when I wake the dreams are no longer here (but in fragments, like the nearly forgotten moments that sometimes reach the surface of my mind even when I'm awake) so I can't be sure. If they do, they must be stronger, so much more vivid, in dreams— or I hope they are. If they are there then maybe someday I'll remember more than fragments of a dream, recognize something in it, be granted some realization.

Tonight the waxing moon has become slightly gibbous and lends the trees a faint sheen. The past is illuminated so by my memory— vague and suggestive, tantalizing. It seems as though something is there in the dimness, something that might be important, though what could be there that was not there by day and thus known to me? Does some lost world almost penetrate night's veil and leave some trace that is sensed rather than seen? Are nights and dreams and the past full of clues I missed, and continue to miss?

Maybe I know when I sleep, but waiting for sleep I know nothing but that I am enveloped in mystery. If the breeze I wish would blow would blow, the leaves would stir and whisper. I imagine I lean close and hear a message, but I can't imagine what the message would be.


( Sunday Verse )