Summer's Siren Song

Summer's Siren Song
March/April 2016

The sky kisses my sallow skin with freckles of sunlight and bits of breeze.
I race rain falling from foul-mouthed marshmallows of heaven;
I win, and heaven’s tears leave on the same bad breath of wind,
Leaving nothing but bits of navel fluff in the sky
And dancing dust motes;
It is summer and I am hot from my walk,
The short shower of rain a long forgotten ache in my soul.

My pool is green, a mosquito-infested swamp
Stagnating in the backyard,
And there is nowhere to swim;
Water is restricted anyway due to damn dam shortage.
I lie in bed delivering a diabolical flood to the drowning dust bunnies;
Sweating out my sins under the watchful eye of a whirring fan.

A siren song shrieks through the streets.
People are bent at the waist like paperclips
As they wind their weary way in the wind;
Moments ago there was but a breeze
Whose kiss is now forgotten in the howling lament of the South-Easter.