Mid-summer you’d find us
rumbling down roads in old Chevies and Pontiacs,
turning graveled backways in a spew of dust
spit out like a jeer towards that town

we hated in July.
It huddled,
cooled-air conditioned,
relatives shaded in rooms draped with curtains,
wilting, like lawns, from a yellowed stupor
exuded by hot rays’ dance on the river’s glazed surface.

We went inland,
inwards toward the triple-tiered foliage
of a creek bed’s canopy. Picked our way
with a casual courage
down black-onyx trails of serpented tree roots
silverned branches
to a place where whitewater split
an ochre sun’s sheen
with a noisy applause
that greeted our arrival.

There merged in jacuzzi-swirled waters,
bodies drifted
while slow breezes carried
the long sighing “ca-aaw” of a crow,
deep “cro-oak” belched from a frog’s throat.

Some fools swam in the refracted light of late afternoon.
By sunset, bodies bloated, red-fevered tongues babbled
over “you-u-u” who didn’t love her anymore,
struck out against
that “sonofabith who’s messin with me.”

Late evening
muffled conversations begun under tree-shadow
fell in tune with the loon,
then faded with the heat
offering no answer
as they disappeared into shadow
to the recurring
“who-hoot” of the owl.

August
algae crawled over the creek, stifling its whitewater with putrid shrouds of moss.
Air thickened, grew listless, creeped up
and settled
around where we lingered,
packing our cars, anxious to leave
but reluctant to start back for town.

“Dog days,” we muttered, unaware the Sirian star calumnied
had pulsed through our summer, inspiring its brightness,
lost now in the darkness of a new moon night.