Summer rides us hard, this fretful season of
damp hands wrung sore, as we sit in the garden gazebo,
its bridal white blackened by horse flies like cancer spots on an x-ray.
In the vacuum-packed air of late August
you’d swear you can hear the muffled screams
of dirty blond leaves as they fall from the dying elm.

The leg sawings of night crickets
play the nerves like a stuck techno pop loop then
it’s the flash of heat lightning
in an eastern opaline sky.

You’ve been expected, you in your blousy pantaloons.