This Side of Paradise

It was a time of exceptionally warm
temperatures, more-so than even for my
Saharan tastes, yet I got through it, and I
prevailed, and I was even a king of sorts
with summer court and crown all right.
A kingdom of prevail in heat, oppressive
dew point, close the atmosphere of late
July, a sun strong-arming scorpions even.
Oh, I would mole the summer underground
and seek the cool of cavern slate, I’d 
wet the high of August Sol employing
hose for welcome shower spritz...
I’d lie, sigh spent, on satin sheets,
a thin of sweat before a fan
beseeching midnight dewy air
to swirl through screen
and oust the warm
of lingering oppression,
that pent-up air intent
with closing in on one hundred. 
Whence the mercury would rise,
and me, one lanky mass of middle age
with blackened heels from stepping long,
that short-term memory of cool from dew
on tawny lawn so adept to lathe my feet
as summer often must.  Regarding yours
so humbly poised upon this climate throne
to idle by till winter frosted panes extant,
till November winds encouraged
goose bumps to form.

And adding to it all was a vent-less
room, a corner filled with musty books
of verse from poets long ago, those classics
reaching throughout time...and in said room
the fist of heat clutched me by the throat.
Still I resisted and browsed on, with Keats,
Shakespeare, Service, Guest and even Milton,
wherein the Devil was cast out.

I exited, with books in hand--it was
Paradise Lost, it was paradise gained.


40 Lines
Writer’s Cramp
7-16-16