Heat index

In summer, you feel more keenly
the light that stays afloat late

above the canopy; that opens early
like a window shade pinned back

by a hand that wants to push you
wholly into the day. Inside a terra

cotta dish, the ashy end of a coil
of citronella. On the deck, two

planks of wood buckling away
from their warped frame. A block

away, the river’s throat swells
with rumors of cicadas in the trees,

their wings drumming up another cloud
of heat. Everything’s one or another

version of your restlessness, of that
fever in your bones that sets a cabinet

of worry-gears clicking— o lucky
spider that merely sifts through frets

in its web, that tamps and beds a wayward
body as if it were a gift to the gods.

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