In another blessed season of anxiety,
in the heady heat of mid-July,
I must dress romantically and
spend another summer restless
listening to outlaw Americana and driving through Appalachia.
I bet on the horses in the rain, chopped my hair off and died it blonde,
I learned to see through clear glasses and flew across two oceans,
And waited.
I baked peaches and blackberries,
slept next to the brownest dog through the loudest thunderstorms,
drank Sonoma wines with my newlywed sister,
And waited.
I sang with a harmonica through
Savannah, Asheville, Chattanooga,
Raleigh, Sarasota, Johnson City,
searching for ragged harmonies lost in dissonance,
And waited.
I faced down demons between two naps a day,
covered myself in mosquito bites and patchy sunburns,
And waited.
I taught English for hours on end, for not enough money,
ate too many biscuits, drowned myself in Verdi heroines,
and watched my body grow soft, settling into her thirties.
The time of year when everything is
overripe and exhausted from blooming.
The Carolina Pines wear spiderweb shrouds and
the market surfeits with melons and eggplants and berries and popsicles.
I just want to see the fireweed in Alaska.
Can I hate the heat? May I hate the summer?
I hate blooming growing planting sweating growing soft and
waiting.
If I hate it, perhaps the writing will make it
all beautiful.
