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It's too hot and humid for September!
Even dust specks descending in the room's sunlight
are beads of sweat running down my sides.
I bring pencil, crossword and ice tea 
to this chair and table, these angled shutters, this ceiling fan.
In a world of metaphors
perhaps a cool alternate reality can emerge.

I sit still as glaciers, remembering houses
I've lived in less impervious to heat than this, 
but still this silk flower arrangement bulges with moisture, 
saturates my bones.  Their stems, like torchieres,
explode in fountains of light;
the morning sun fades for want of power.
I've drained salmon blood truer than you,
disdain the lilies, echoes a chorus of golden cat-tails.
Pink iridescent roses uncurl with laughter.

Alpine Wind, beckons the puzzle to my neon veins;
somewhere in Webster's English waits a panacea of snow,
a virgin crest white as morning, firs towering,
their cones crisp as Pippins.
In my mind I cannot conjure adjectives
to match December's frozen silt.
Foehn, I write Across, imaging the Down words 
will dangle from each letter like Christmas icicles.

I suffer through Lunches for Caesar, Egyptian Cobra, Asian Gazelle,
knowing in my exasperation that crystals will never drift
up to my window; that Salads, Asp and Goa
bring deserts to my desert.  They languish in the web
of these obscene flowers, make umbrellas of their petals.
Soon I'll perforate them with my No. 2 spear.
“This'll get the thistle”, I think aloud.
Beach Sight, ask the Crossword again.  Four letters.
I think of Wave as arctic oceans would lay cold and pristine at my temples.
Alas, Dune is all that fits, miles of arid dust for Caesar and his cobra
to mock me as they conquer.
Condensation has gathered on my glass.  I press
the tumbler to my forehead, think again of arctic seas.

The fan sends a breeze down to succor this weary pilgrim;
I'm better for an instant.  My fingers leave
translucent windows in the frost.  Through them I see
icebergs glistening in Alaskan inlets,
snakes and Caesars drowning in the flood.
The illusion melts as my forehead dries.
Even the wooden blades above me send Santa Ana winds
in their endless spirals.
Other words begin crossing my Alpine Wind:
Serf and Ego fasten themselves like leeches in a fetid swamp.
Letters coagulate in Fungus, Mire and Moss.
I'm suffocating in the coils of that Egyptian Asp.

Suddenly I attack with the eraser, pounding
like a sledge hammer, smudging lines and squares
until only Foehn remains, clean and new as when I first wrote it.
Now Asp gives way to Alp, Caesar falls in a Fjord.
Fungus is dead with weed killer.
Villages appear draped in blue calm,
chalets and seaside cottages shine in gentle sun.
My glass is an icon for the God of Winter,
for Norsemen and Reindeer fleeting across the page.
At the tranquil hub blows my Alpine Wind 
now cool like Autumn's first sigh,
the icicles promises yet to come.
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