You need a mind of winter
to endure in a land of summer:
the young in one another’s arms
is an icicle stabbed through your
infinitely stabby heart. Black
asphalt grabbing at your feet,
blasting sun pounding you
with palpable weight, photons
ripe, photons sharp as stars,
pointed and sticking to your skin.
Parking lots shimmery wave,
like the thoughts of a man.
A plastic snow man on a green
St Augustine lawn, ninety degrees
Christmas week, summery inflated
palms, snow dappled rain deer
hot to the touch. The lot of you,
melting inside, melting outside,
the wind an open oven door,
above you in the trees, their leaves dry,
halfway to dust and still clinging
the stem, the whir-burr of dirt daubers
and weed whackers, inflated to bursting,
the air inside you hotter, pushy,
the air outside, the air that is nothing
but presence and the presence that is
not unlike nothing. So empty man,
who’s the happy genius of your house?
