June Heat

Today is so hot that just standing in the sun will make one sweat. Now imagine raking several 100 by 3 foot beds of dry and clotted dirt. Sweat was a down pour for sure. My arms glisten red-brown ---sun screen will need to be reapplied today. The sweat beads on my arm hair like dew on grass.

A river runs down my back; my cotton shirt, bisected by its banks. It flows down the ridge of my back but creates the pattern of up an up-stream flow. The sweat forms a fan like shape, a delta, at my shoulder blade. The lake of head waters of this imaginable river is nonexistent but it's true source, the sweats source, is from all over and trickles downward.

I swim this river… or a least I want to. Raking the remains of a rivers flood I sail the stream on my back up-wards. The delta flows into the ocean of ideas that is my head. In this sweat filled head space, I dream of sweet things, chilled things, and things of ice. I want to dump my water bottle on my head or fill up a big plastic tub and dive in. Chilled white wine or sweet syrupy Popsicles, these are things that my dry mouth wants. I dream of the grapes from my grandmother’s freezer: tart, sweet and cold. A gentle breeze cools my arms, back and neck briefly but I want Antarctica.