Tie dye in July
Cicadas drone their sun-drunk, tireless hymn
as July swelters, gold and overfull.
the driveway steams, the plastic buckets brim,
and heat, like dye, won't sit still or stay dull.
We cinch the cotton tight in twisted rings,
as if a knot could hold the blazing tide.
but sweat and color are unruly things:
both spread, both stain, both won't be denied.
Cerulean and crimson breach their line,
seep into one another, slow, unplanned,
and thicken into a hue with no design,
no name the rubber bands prepared it for.
The soda ash unlatches what was sealed;
the color doesn't sit, it moves in deep,
past cotton's threshold, till it's not revealed
but lived in, permanent as things we keep.
So heat unstitches winter's careful fold,
loosens what was buttoned, cinched, and pressed,
and turns the plain, repeated days to gold
the way a fever turns a body's rest.
Unwind the bands. Let August find the proof:
a swirl no ruler's hand could have designed,
the driveway's stain, the sun-bleached, faded roof
of summer, fixed now in the changed mind.
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