The heat has come again,
a stifling heavy blanket on this
new city,
I am discovering how blacktop
and steel
intensifies
the radiant temperature.

I am thinking of backwoods days,
of the old old days when I was
young and blooming, growing sturdy
as a sapling,
dirt roads behind me, dust covering
the back window of the car
as I lay down in the back of our
blue station wagon, no seatbelt
just the vibration of us
going over the gravel and grime.

Those were the days I went from morning
to night with no shoes on.
Grass was a pleasure to walk on, lush and green
like a living carpet,
you could press your face to the ground and
smell the earthworms moving silently in their
own worlds, you could imagine them
just inches from your face.

You would stay out till all hours in the country,
and you would hear the whip-o-will keening in the trees
that reached up their black branches to the night sky
a contrast of emptiness against a backdrop
of stars.
You would find Orion
as a night wind moved in
the moths beating hopelessly against the porchlight,
the lightning bugs creating their own,
and even to this day the lightning bugs are
still magic the way they were back then....

Only now I glimpse them from the inside of a car
or the other side of a door
because I've become too intolerant of temperature,
or because the temperature has become
unbearable....

06/10/2008

Posted on 06/10/2008
Copyright © 2024 Vikki Owens