Summer

What's with the weather, anyway?
If I wanted to live in some sweltering buggy outpost, 
I would wear a pith helmet and talk nonsense about rare beetles;
do you see me doing those things?
Doesn't National Geographic handle all that?

I have caught myself in a few rare moves lately, though, I admit.
I blame it on losing sleep.
I never know anymore whether I will put a sachet in the guest room drawers,
a bag of dog poop,
or one of Muffin's dead mice.

Behold the end of the world, when fey devils employ a single match
to devour, with light, all that is, and then almost delicately, 
throw the bar,
lock the latch.

Signs of The End are everywhere, not just the tv weather.
Have you seen Trudi Beauty Queen lately?
She's about the size of a zeppelin, and isn't even blonde anymore.
All day, she screams at the help in German,
while stuffing eclairs into her mouth like shells into field artillery.

I think, if it would snow, my chi would center and I could be my usual self again.
Instead, I have to wear sunglasses so huge that I look like a Mars probe,
and I can't see a blessed thing, sidewalk from six-lane,
Trudi from a tarantula,
Greek yogurt from green tea facial mask.

Perdition arrives on the arm of Despair, in evening's early gloaming
announced and feted, by Chinese lantern light,
to faces slack,
and ashy white.

I think I'll throw on a caftan, hire some sherpas to carry the tea cakes,
and go visit Bitsy Henderson, to have her administer a test,
running her finger back and forth in front of my eyes.
She'll tell me, if I'm a little off,
and whip out her planner to tell me that summer isn't forever--

only alimony, crow's feet, and naturally, us. 
_______