August 14: Scarborough Marsh

Sweltering salt marsh--

how can the plovers

already be headed south?

Posted with Blogsy

July 15: Hot

Steamy morning--

humming "Too Darn Hot,"

my mind on a summer past.

Posted with Blogsy

November 7: Heat

Cat moves through the house

from one vent to another

communing with heat.

Posted with Blogsy

May 28: Bar Harbor

Balmy afternoon

fragrance of pending rain--

I get an ice cream cone.

Posted with Blogsy

September 5: Doldrums

Trying to stay cool
in my sun-heated office.
Swimmer on the river.

July 1: Hot night out

Went out with a girlfriend for dinner and a gab session. Sat on the harborside deck of Peter Ott's in Camden, where we watched the daysailers head out for sunset cruises and enjoyed the breeze off the water at the end of a long, sultry day.

Sailboats motor out
to catch the breeze.
Conversation turns to sex.

June 9: Heat

Rich lilac perfume

hangs in hot afternoon air

humming with bees.

Posted with Blogsy

November 16: Warmth of a sleeping cat.

Turn the heat up.

The cat has left my lap

to watch squirrels.

July 18: Rainfall breaks the heat wave

Finally rain falling.

Across the street in the dark

a child calls out.

Posted with Blogsy

July 16: Dog Days

Behind the fan's hum

vireo singing

all day long.

Posted with Blogsy

July 9: Chilly fog descends after days of heat

No longer sultry--
pulling on my flannel shirt
after heat wave's past.

July 6: Early morning run before it gets too hot

Eighty-two degrees.
After my run, how cool
the dewy bushes.

June 25: Heat of the moment

Seven vultures ride
thermals rising off the road.
I'm a warm body.

June 2: Return of the Red-eyed Vireo

In the neighborhood this morning...

Another hot morning.
Back for the summer,
Vireo sings non-stop.

May 31: June bugs

June bugs bounce off screens
in the velvet dark,
my only company.

May 30: Run

First run in a few months, could only manage about a mile. But I had to start somehow. Today was spring's first very warm day--in the 80s--and the only bird heard was a cardinal blurting out his staccato song at day's end.

As I jog slowly
down the busy roadside,
I step on deer tracks.

January 27: A little heat

After a weekend spent largely outside--shorefront birding and protesting on the streets of Portland yesterday and birding some more on wind-swept Scarborough Marsh this morning--I arrived home tonight feeling permanently chilled to the bone, muscles sore from being tensed for so long against the cold. Flannel pajamas and a heavy sweater are helping to finally warm my core, but the best moment of the evening so far has been washing some dishes, immersing my hands in that hot, soapy water. Perhaps a bath will follow dinner.

Washing dishes,
rough hands in hot water,
I sigh deeply.

June 20: Solstice snow

Tonight at 7:09 EDT we officially celebrate Summer Solstice, the longest day, the first day of summer. As if on cue, a heat wave has rolled in, bringing some of the first hot weather we've experienced in months. The air is positively sultry, and you won't hear me complaining. We get too little of this in Maine to whine about it.

Which is why it's ironic that this morning I experienced a snow shower. Maybe "snow" is not quite accurate, but the locust tree's flower petals scattering down upon my parents and me as we stood in their driveway sure looked like snow. The hypnotizing swirl of white "flakes" tossed over our heads by the breeze certainly looked like a snow shower, too, but the blue sky and the 80-degree air caressing our bare arms contradicted what our eyes were telling us. Not snow, flowers raining down on our heads, petals sprinkling over the green grass of summer. Our Solstice blessing from the black locust.

Not lotus: locust.
But its white petals also
convey a blessing.

July 22: Panting Crow

Yeah, it's hot. Everyone's talking about it. I personally love these few steamy days we get each summer, given how many weeks (months, really) of too-cold weather we get the rest of the year. Besides, sweating can be a cleansing experience. That's why they have saunas and sweat lodges.

Birds don't sweat. Like dogs, they pant to cool off. Stopping at the grocery store today, I noticed a crow hopping around the parking lot, beak wide open. A tough day to be a black bird walking around on asphalt.

Black crow on blacktop,
panting in this heat. It could
fly off to some shade...

July 7: Patch of Sun

I love this hot summer weather, luxuriate in the heat of sunlight on my bare arms, want to roll around like a cat in that patch of sun on my office floor. A set of windows faces west in my office, so the light streams in these afternoons. Heliotrope and purple and yellow vetch blossoms fill the horizon above the sills. Other than boughs waving in a light breeze, the only thing moving out there on this steamy afternoon are goldfinches visiting my feeder, chattering in the distance. A female goldfinch just paused here, her gold breast glowing, the color of sunlight--which of course has no color, but I imagine sunlight made visible to be just that color. She carries with her a patch of sun. She embodies this summer heat.

I watch a goldfinch
from this sultry patch of sun,
both of us glowing.