Open balcony doors, flung wide like arms.
Not a cloud. I invite in the sun;
The kitchen plunged into a bright atrium.
An engorged sink, filled with daytime.
A sunbath, basking.
The curtains play in a breeze
As light as their white linen.
Hung like two tall nightclub bouncers,
They billow with world-breath
And flicker into happy surrender-flags.
The summer seeps into my bones
And heat steadily sneaks into the home –
An all-conquering fifth column;
The thick, gluey air, heavy like marble.
My throat becomes dry, slowly
Parched like a starved riverbed
While the room coughs as a dusty attic
Finally opened up to the ablution-sky.
This seasons eats movements.
Clears my schedule. Scorches it.
Mirage-like and doused,
The days become their mercury air
And outside, warmth beckons like a lover.
Unconscious footsteps. I plod.
Unthinking baby steps.
To the sun-calls, the light-falls;
Each ray like a siren’s lasso,
Pulling me out onto the balcony pulpit.
The crow’s nest. The pier.
My deep breaths emulating explorers,
I stitch myself into the simmering.
Immobilised in the season’s shadow.
Nature is held hostage, tied and left to yellow;
The grass dies, the trees blister.
I gaze on for months, burning slightly,
Mesmerised in the cauldron-bulb
By the flexing of the strong sun’s eye.
