Heat fear

hits hard.

It

feels like

initiation.

As if no

other clues

were needed:

webs have

been cast,

coating and covering,

capturing the dusty

careworn

messages of the season;

the snakes, too,

are abroad,

surfacing,

cutting a break,

running their

bellies across

the scorched ground

whispering their

secrets.

And I am once

again

faced

with my

frightened tendencies

to abdicate

all sense of

capability:

body, mind, soul.

Calm arrives

in the song of

grasshoppers,

sentinels of relief,

humming with

the heat;

their tune

repeating, loving

like a heartbeat.

And most of all,

I revere the crone

decked in

cryptic black,

fan in hand,

resting under the awning:

smiling sardonically

at the ants

desperately

heaving

keeping the

machine

turning.

She beckons us

to draw into her shade;

to close the shutters

with soft force;

recline behind

the blinds;

to sample the

waters of siesta

and allow cool

showers of rain

to cast radically

soothing shawls

of reprieve.