The drought has made July linger. The air smells of sewer *****, sweetgum, sassafras, fescue, concrete and asphalt.
On this long summer day when the light and heat decide to linger— parents let their children play well into the night on the community’s green.
Their laughter and the croaking of frogs in the rention pond, just beyond, overgrown with cattails,
has my dog thinking the sound of fireworks and wanting to go back home. I see the flickerings of the early late night news peeping through the half-drawn curtains as we head back.
I imagine the children dreaming dream after dream in the hot mist of sleep after the last door has shut.
In that moment I see the first lines of my new poem, full of that living hurting nostalgia that everyone likes to star and comment on— a poem, that I imagine, might be found after my death by my executor. It would be one of those critically disdained viral odes charming and popular enough to be embroidered on sofa pillows that comfort the aching backside of old widows. A poem with a hint of despair but not written in despair. One that knows the substance of July summer nights.
