artwork: ralph murre
Dog Days
by
Susan Elbe
July 5
In
Utah
Millions
of crickets five inches deep
trill
like frenzied schoolgirls
speaking
in tongues. In New York
tripped
alarms slam the air.
Someone
wrenches open a hydrant
and
blistering streets sizzle with steam.
Here,
the heat leaches you of story
and
radiance. Hard work, this
mucking
through silence and sleep
so
seamless no dream can unzip it,
not
even an old ghost to tear at its threads
with
long fingernails of memory.
July 20
This
is how you want it—summer
forever,
the sky, blue and lucent
as
the moonstone of a baby’s eyes
and
clean, white sheets
you
lie down on at night,
someone
outside on his way home,
whistling
an old tune—
See
the pyramids along the Nile . . .
while
you slowly cross
the
wobbly bridge to sleep
and
somewhere behind clouds,
the
dog star drops
off
the edge of this cockeyed earth.
August 1
This
is how it is—at 2 a.m. still 80°,
the
air murky with dank breath
and
fishy lake smell. The carp moon
belly-flopped
in the sky. A lignin
of
sweat cements you to the sheets.
Angled
with shadow, the street
shifts
like dream, turns a different face.
Stalling
neon thips and fizzles, faded
to
the hollow-heart pink of strawberries.
Toward
morning, blue crackle, thunder,
rain
pattering through the leaves
like
a small dog’s toenails on linoleum.
That
dumb darling, your huge need,
lazy
and bloated with heat, lies
beside
you, panting in its thick pelt of fur.
August 2
The
cicadas and light this morning
rattle
in the leaves like brass keys.
Last
night’s rain trickles
from
the eaves in long, silver strings.
Shucking
sweet corn,
your
fingers are slippery with silk.
Daddy
longlegs traipse in all the corners.
Already
so much starts to fall away
from
the deep green, too-lush days
that
prickle like stiff crinoline.
Imagine
20 years from now. Then,
with
luck, 20 more. Loss is a dry well,
empty
pocket. It needs filling.
August 5
Not
yet dusk, not yet
the
underwater-blue time,
but
the brief half-hour after sunset
when
you glow inside out,
your
slow-finned heart leaping
clear
of fear, worry, what holds it
to
this fraught world.
You
give the devil his due
each
time you care too much
about
what doesn’t matter.
Something
dark unwinds, snakes
up
into the windrowed light.
August 7
Nothing
keeps in this weather. Tomatoes
wrinkle
and split. Cucumbers soften
and
snap beans rust. Salt won’t pour.
The
first dream in weeks begins.
God
asks me what I want.
I
say I’m lonely. Give me poems.
I’m
hungry. Can I have the moon?
I
say nothing is enough. Let me live
forever
this life that exhausts
and
scares me witless, yet brings me
daily
to my knees in thanks.
But
God turns up the underside of a leaf
and
there’s death, riding
like
a soft cocoon along the vein.
~
first published in CALYX
