The Sweat of Summer

It is the sweat of summer, these starving days. It is as if there were no rain until summer, then dry rain only. The walkways are dry, remiss, all ashen in the moonlight. Steadily a mist is forming, a covering of vapor. The hours are bogged down like bicycles in sand. Time ticks slowly; a cloud crosses the moon. If this be summer, a time of pruning, a time of casting off, let it be so. Let the urges march forth into battle. Summer will rage on until exhausted it slows. I am a rag dampened by the sweat of summer.