I smell summer's immanent arrival in that perfume. Spring is melting away. Next week will bring days in the nineties and then in the hundreds, with nights in the seventies. I am not looking forward to that. I'll be hunkering down with my windows and drapes closed all day, swigging iced drinks and dreaming of April rain. I'm sure the rain is gone for the year, unless we get a thunderstorm, which I'd rather not have. It would only steam up the sweltery air. I will just endure the heat and dream of April and of October; the first the certainty that is gone, and the second the possibility that may or may not come. But anything is better than May giving way to June, even if it's only a conjured image.
Where is that lemonade?
Sunday Verse
Mrs. Noah : Taken after the flood
by Jo Shapcott
I can't sit still these days. The ocean
is only memory, and my memory as fluttery
as a lost dove. Now the real sea beats
inside me, here, where I'd press fur and feathers
if I could. I'm middle-aged and plump.
Back on dry land I shouldn't think these things:
big paws which idly turn to bat the air,
my face by his ribs and the purr which ripples
through the boards of the afterdeck,
the roar - even at a distance - ringing in my bones,
the rough tongue, the claws, the little bites,
the crude taste of his mane. If you touched my lips
with salt water I would tell you such words,
words to crack the sky and launch the ark again.