Ice Water Shade
Ice water in my mouth, and a cooling shadow sinking down my throat…
The sound of the fountain outside my window. Sweat, in the small of my back…trickling. Earlier, the shower spray exploded against me in a streaming rush, driving heat out my skin. At least until things were reluctantly shut down and quietly dripping. The humid weight of the air sinking back in.
June twenty-fourth is a liquid day.
My drink (in an old Guinness glass) is frosted, sweating. The ice: soft crystal clicking as it shifts. A slow melt. The lights are off (cutting down the illusion of heat). But the bluish shadows are dense. Thick. The air outside is filmed with a vague haze. Birds are brightly tweeting, seemingly uneffected by the temperature.
And there is that sound of the fountain in the pond. The watery, trickling splash.
The sound blends with the melting of the ice in my glass, the feel of sweat beading on my body, of coolness sinking inside from another deep swallow of water and, behind it all, the distant whispering of the highway.
I’m dreaming, awake, of the beach.
And breathing slow in the shade.
June 24th, 2002 at 8:21 PM
Ah, a quintessential tangerine entry.
So happy your back.
June 24th, 2002 at 8:45 PM
Thanks Carol, I’m glad you liked it!
I’m enjoying this new set up a lot (even if I am sweating buckets, at the moment…)
April 5th, 2003 at 11:44 PM
It was a very good poem
April 7th, 2003 at 4:47 PM
Thanks Tenacia — I wish it was as warm here now as it was when I wrote that entry (today is chilly and rainy; not much heat to speak of).
Still, it is Spring at last — so that’s cool.
Thanks for reading!