Heat Wave
June 22 2022
I peered at the road ahead
through refracted light.
Through hot air
that seemed to rise in waves
from sun-drenched pavement.
Through windshield glare
and the sweat stinging my eyes.
The A/C barely functioned
and the car felt sluggish
on rubber
softened by heat.
On the blacktop ahead,
some big gulls
were greedily feeding;
road kill
smeared across the centre line
too mangled to identify.
They waited inordinately long
before lifting off,
and like a man's quick desperate gasps
of thin mountain air
at altitude,
they flapped hard
wings fully out-stretched;
yet could barely get purchase,
the super-heated air
giving little to grasp.
In this record heat-wave
the automatic calculation
of lift, resistance, drag
power, and gravity
that had always proved infallible
failed them,
and it was just by a fraction
one gargantuan gull
missed grazing my car;
wings frantically pumping
as the airflow over the roof
deflected him
just enough.
How strange
when the air we take for granted
the water in which we swim
the ground we firmly plant ourselves
betray us like this;
as if we were aliens
who'd unexpectedly landed
on a hostile planet
and stepped outside.
The bird
will have to relearn
the finer points of flight.
And I'll try to park under cover
remember my shades
drive less fast.
We are unaccustomed to heat.
Even the gulls are struggling.
And I find myself glancing overhead
as if wary for birds
falling to earth
from out of the blue;
the sky
disconcertingly quiet
in the heat of high no on.
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