Another breathless afternoon slowly vanishes as darkness screws itself
Around the horizon
Another dented chair from the kitchen, rag wiped clean and still damp, is dragged under old cottonwoods
Another light from the rented farm house goes off
Another frayed fan from Woolworths slaps the humid air with no effect
Another prayer for relief
Another sigh slipped from the prayer drifts in the night on a small journey to nowhere
Another attempt at escape for the old woman
Another tortured wait to feel a change, a yearn to feel a breeze, but yet still the heat
Another day of my short visit over
Another night like the last
Another like another like another

Another chair dragged close by hands work worn rough
Another scorching July night, in the low plains, in a sheltered valley
Another humid night when sweat drips off old chairs and old fans and old brows that pray
Another night when sweat has enveloped us like a wet summer jacket zipped tight around the valley
Another laugh from the tavern down the hill
Another place where they don’t go
Another moment for the two old lovers to share in stillness and be like this wind; of no movement, no sound
Another with another, forever
Another chance for darkness to spur the change, to stir the wind, or cue a cloud to rain

But no, just another non event …this evening of hope
But there is no cue
But there is no change; there is no breeze
Swelter is relentless and constricting
But these two patriarchs will share this evening’s oppression like their life,
…together,
Both, of substance and hopeful, with little to celebrate
But they will cope and do it all;
Meet the challenge of life, like this night.
with very few very, very small words


Gram and gramps of the country
in the summer.
of my youth .
in the evening
A few years from a/c