A Tall Drink
June 6 2014


A tall drink
in high summer.

When unsparing sun

beats down,
and even the shade is unbearable,
in torpid heat
thickly humid air.

The ice clinks
as you gently swirl the glass,
a tall thick-walled tumbler

with a pleasing heft.

Not frosted, or beaded, or damp
but soaking wet,
water pouring-off
your slickly gripping hand.

You sip, knowing the ice won't last,
and the cool liquid
temporarily quenches.
Something bitter, on a summer day,
because a cloying drink
cannot cut the heat,
makes you even lazier.

The dog, spread-eagled in shade
pants and yelps,
gnashing her teeth
in fitful sleep.
As you, too, can't help but fade away,
the lassitude of afternoon
like a weight
bearing down on the world.

When all sensible creatures
declare a truce,
predator and prey
belly-up to the watering hole,
loll in cool mud.

And even the buzz of insects
dies down
as they lie in wait for dusk,
small black bodies
soaking-up the sun.
And the fly, you absentmindedly swatted
turns a dry hard husk,
a quick desiccation
instead of messy rot.

Your drink, empty;
the sun-bleached deck
hellishly hot.
 

This is the first hot humid day, when I was reminded of the enervating torpor of summer. You go outside, and immediately feel drained. The wind is still, and nothing seems to move: the birds are roosting, the dogs sensibly sleep, and even the insects have found some shade in which to rest. Only mad dogs, and Englishmen, as Noel Coward famously quipped ...!

A tall cool drink came to mind. This immediately appealed to my love of microcosm: to close observation of the small and everyday. So I wanted to describe the heft of the glass, the sound of the ice, the condensation soaking off. A gin and tonic, for sure. The stylistic challenge here is in getting the musicality in the language, and in getting just how much to say (where less is always more, and I have a unfortunate tendency to say too much).

Of course, description can't carry a poem or sustain the interest of a reader, so I let my stream of consciousness go, tried to find some narrative thread, and then in the end  zeroed-in on the tall cool drink: the satisfying sense of completion of circling back.