Heat Wave

Like some Dantean punishment It descended in mid-May, And turned my favorite springtime month Into an endurance test. We fell to sleep beneath a tide of heat And rose to rising heat, uncoiling From the roasting ground. The heat was thickly wet though no rain fell, And made one walk with a slowed reptilian gait That pressed its way through invisible deeps. I stood looking over my lawn As I panted beneath the unseeable, steaming sea As I watched it turn into a minature savannah. Thoughts of the Amazon crowded me, Choking under waves of green. Later, guzzling cold tea beneath my blasting vents My Scientist Voice reminded me How no May of my childhood ever seethed like this, Back before we burnt that hole in the sky, Down Under. And I thought of how our own blazing star Is crowding closer to us now, A yellow tiger, Burning all too bright.