It's hot out there. The grass is dry, and some lawns look scraped and scalped, patches of parched red dirt pushing into view through straw-colored remains. We're keeping the AC around 78 degrees, and it feels cool. I don't go out there much except to get into my car and drive to work, or to walk my requisite hour after the sun goes down. There are places on my walk that seem cool and breezy. That's because the people have just watered their plants and the sidewalk is wet and evaporating, creating a tiny local breeze. It would be interesting to be one of those people. The people who care about the outsides of their houses.
I walked past one of the don't-care houses, and the little boy on his motorcycle-looking bicycle said, "There's a bottle!" I had stepped on part of the same bottle the night before, so I followed his pointing finger, and there was the bottom of the broken beer bottle. Then I noticed he was about to contact a stray piece of it with his bare heel. That wouldn't do, so we both spent some time collecting all the pieces while his mother watched, immobile it seemed, from her chair on the front porch. "People just throw things out of cars!" I yelled, cheerfully. She nodded or something. I walked on.
The cop who lives on the corner has got the poison ivy starting up again by the big tree on the edge of the lot. But the drought has brought the vine so little fuel that it remains tiny; the three-part leaflets haven't even reached the trunk. I am not sure if I'm gung-ho enough to bring along my spray bottle of ivy-killer on my walk. Where did the expression, "gung ho" come from, anyway? It can't be good that I use it. Anything automatic has to be suspect. As well as anything over-considered.
I am trying to finish a tiny poem. It has eight short lines. It was an assignment from the Soul Mistress of my writing group. It's supposed to be about writing poetry, and has to contain an onomatapeia. I've written it, but it doesn't have quite the impact I'd like. I can see becoming obsessed with perfecting it. What other activity to pour oneself into than something as insignificant as the arrangement of a few words? Because, after all, a poem IS a magic spell, and the spell has to be cast correctly.
Then again, how can I "pour myself" at all in this weather?
