Sleeping Outside
A week of summer heat
with no cooling breeze
or break made bedrooms
like brick kilns
still hot after a day's firing.
You couldn't sleep.
Air conditioning back then
was a couple of loud,
clunking fans that blew
a hum of hot air.
To get relief
we would all sleep outside
on the back lawn on hessian
camping beds that sagged
and creaked even under
a child's weight. The night air
carried a slight damp
and the hint of a breeze.
I can remember laying back
under a blaze of stars,
giddy and full of questions
at such wonder strung
in filaments overhead.
Uncertainty and doubt
had begun to pick
my childish world apart.
I would grip the sides
of the bed possessed by
a strange sense
that if I let go, I would fall
upwards into the sky.
I could never get to sleep
even when a cool came
upon the early morning air.
There were too many
sounds I could not explain
and shadows my mind
would shape into threats.
I would creep back inside,
back into a walled safety
and the heat.
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