by Steve Gaines
once more July!
and the oven of my birth
forty-seven years ago
repeated
the ghost of every Summer in between
suspended on the walls of my mind
inside my head
a cast off clutter of soft memories
July remembers hot!
dusty
sun tanned
ice tea and corn of the cob
July is the child in me
every year burst out again
through the thin skin
of my perpetual childhood
I am cast in Julys
sculpted in molten shapes
liquid memories
sweat and steam and swimming pools
I am a brief memento of the Depression
those parched years of the thirties
turned to the constant search for water
nothing quite like Nebraska Julys
thirty-one days of swelter
four hundred miles of shimmering highway
and thirsty corn
in forty-seven years
of my July clothing put together
there wouldn’t be enough to dress the numbers
of a modest basketball team
made up of short men…
no shirt
bare feet
shorts and swim suits
its a naked month
July is a fire!
somehow I have never quite burned to those standards
not yet…
rather only just simmered a little
now and then
and it takes heat to move these aging bones
but July comes back every year
a comet returned with me in it’s wake
and one of these years…
the explosion will be my own….
