as the mercury rises
    canned windows hold to the corner
    street music threads through doors
    wandering a street map never feels confined
    just laborious this time

birds gathering favor
    what’s left right along the inside
    outside the collaboration of footsteps
    drops tattooing the powdered ground
    angry notes left in wet music

the temperature’s a number
    just a quantity cupped within
    everyone’s favored commitment
    that clones a desire going down
    shrugging breath under loamy air

heartbeats misread a poem
    into the number
    into the quantity
    into the wet
    into the labor
    into the breath
we love for no reason at all

I’m from the South, except really from a bit further south than the South. We hate the summer, but it’s a part of us. Faulkner, Twain, Williams, Mitchell, Percy, Hurston, Lee, O’Connor, and so many more find their pages bound by humidity. And no, I haven’t read works by all of them. But I should.

I’d claim no prompt, but the wonderful use of wordles in many existing prompts serves as a prompt itself. By far the most interesting wordle I managed today was from Dana Guthrie Martin’s page. And this was before I realized she and Nathan Moore are committed to an extraordinary task: Working on a single, unique, all-encompassing, collaborative poem over thirty months. (My hyper-analytical side screams that the mental transpose is one poem over thirty days, but, well, I’m silly and trying to stick to one a day.)

Also, we had no luck finding morels last weekend. I have little idea where to look here, and the sheer amount of leaf litter makes me doubt if I’ll see any. hm.