Like the Worst of Summer

Being away from you,
the loneliness:
there are air-conditioned rooms,
but you can only eat so much,
drink so much,
window-shop in catalogs so much.

A remembered July,
every day an oven,
through the oven window:
rain clouds teasing.
You could feel the cool,
almost,
count the drops,
take off your clothes and shower in it
(but it was really sweat).

The clouds, a giant hand
reaching for the switch
to turn the cool rain shower on,
the oven off.

For thirty days
they only turned the darkness on at dusk;
at dawn the light came on:
thirty oven days.

You could watch a storm at sea
on the television
and dream cooler.

This loneliness is like that,
no matter what’s playing on the tube,
what flavor ice cream advertised,
it waits, it lurks, it torments,
teasing facade of relief.