A Dry Heat

July 2 2019

It's a dry heat.

Not the kind you stew in,

like a soft-boiled egg

soaking in your own sweat.

But where you feel it sucking you dry,

as if a desert wind

greedy for wetness

had blasted through,

all sand and rasp and panting dogs

lolling immobilized.

This heat penetrates my skin

suffuses my body,

joints unlocking

and muscles softening

in the bone-deep warmth.

We are mostly water,

and I imagine the small mound of powder

I would leave behind

reduced to basic chemistry.

The asphalt has also gone soft,

too hot

to even walk on.

Waves of heat are rising off

and rippling down its surface,

as if solid objects

could move at will,

as if the barrier had dissolved

between matter and air.

You tend to hallucinate

in heat like this,

dreaming of a cool lake

and dew-tipped grass,

a tall drink

clinking with ice.

Like the dry cold of winter

the sky is a brilliant blue

transparently still.

Nothing to block the sun

as earth edges ever so slightly

nearer its star.

Such a fine balance

between our only home

glowing blue and green

against absolute blackness,

and a scorched rock

circling an eyeless vacuum

through trackless time.

When the living planet

can so easily tip

into deadly heat.

I've really been hankering to write, but nothing was coming. Until I sat down tonight, pen in hand, and the obvious became clear:  write about the heat.

I wouldn't quite call this a heat wave. I think it has to be well into the 30s for that. And it's nothing like Europe is experiencing now. But really, what struck me most was the absence of humidity. The dry heat is so much easier to take. Which is, of course, where the poem began:  with dry heat. 

I think the poem can also be seen as a commentary on climate change. The final stanza could easily be read as referring to the tipping points of climate, where global warming becomes a runaway train:  positive feedback loops, such as a massive Antarctic glacier dropping into the sea; or Arctic permafrost releasing unstoppable volumes of the potent greenhouse gas methane; or the albido effect, when highly reflective surface of snow and ice is replaced by ever expanding areas of darker heat-absorbing rock.