September

The summer was so hot
the dogs stuck to the sidewalks
with the newspapers
and the black metal cans
everyone left waiting on the curb.
You could smell it
in the glass pitchers
on table tops,
and the sheets that never
dried on the clothes lines;
the canvas beach bags
mothers dragged wearily
across the sand
and the ice cream trucks
melting across the highways.

Children felt it open
up the windows at night
and find a corner
of the bed to smother,
while fathers baited it on hooks
or mowed it down
in flat, dry stripes
as if begging each other
to escape.
And the crickets just hummed
beneath the corn silk
and the dry mouth
of August,
daring the cats to play
hide and seek -
searching for September.