Summertime

Soon it will come: an invisible tsunami rising out of the Gulf and overwhelming our every defense, leaving us ruined and awash each in our own sweat. For some, it is a time and a weather both to be escaped, as everyone in the far north dreamed of a winter vacation to the islands or the couple from whom we bought our house who now summer in Maine. (Ah tiempo, time and weather all in one, such an exquisite bit of Romance vocabulary).

And in spite of it all, as I sit on my porch beneath my fan in the least amount of clothes decency will allow (and why did you think Stanley wore “wife-beater” undershirts?) and sip an Abita as densely beaded by condensation as my own skin is drenched with sweat, my heart will sing like a host of cicadas: a aboriginal drone which will eventually call forth this song–if only in my mind–and only as sung by Janis.