Haiku for the Start of Summer

The heat comes early to Florida

Summer is here already. It’s too early again, but what can we do?

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HAIKU FOR THE START OF SUMMER

spring gone in a blink
the heat lands like palm to cheek
summer already

*

surrounded by drought 
gator in a shallow pool
unquenchable thirst

*

soft skies above me
pale colors whisper gently
down here it all burns

*

a grey day dawns bright
tends the fire in my chest
hope falls from the sky

*

every time it rains
white ibises peck the earth
water draws forth all

*

rain is back again
white ibises back again
the same but different

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WEEKEND POTPOURRI:

• Currently on repeat:

• Fog Chaser is back with a new volume focused on the desert

• One Hundred Reasons Not to Die by Nickole Brown

• A(nother) poem:

AT NOON

By Reginald Gibbons

The thick-walled room’s cave-darkness,
cool in summer, soothes
by saying, This is the truth, not the taut
cicada-strummed daylight.
Rest here, out of the flame—the thick air’s
stirred by the fan’s four
slow-moving spoons; under the house the stone
has its feet in deep water.
Outside, even the sun god, dressed in this life
as a lizard, abruptly rises
on stiff legs and descends blasé toward the shadows.