An August Tantrum in Murfin Verse

 

We are just getting out of a prolonged hot and humid spell in the northwest boonies of your greater Chicago metroplex.  Storms that have dumped deluges have mostly slid around us in my part of McHenry County.  We have even flirted with drought as we watched other parts of the country being swept away by flood water or torn to shreds by tornado outbreaks.  Smoke from Canadian wildfires give us dangerous air quality now and then.  

 

                            Heat index heat index  highs in the Chicago area earlier this week.  Note the steamy 111 posted for McHenry.

So why am I not sanguine about all of the damn summer pleasantness that has temporarily settled on us here?  Because I know it can’t last.  Sooner or later August will come roaring back like a blast furnace and sap my will to live.  I am an old man now and I have seen too many Illinois Augusts not to know it’s coming!

Back in 2011, a year when Mc Henry County was nearly leveled by a derecho—a so-called land hurricane—followed by over a week of days in the upper 90s, saturating humidity, and power outages, I wrote and posted my anti-paean to this month.  I preemptively offer it again.  It will be appropriate again soon enough.

Two poets doing heavy lifting on an oppressively hot August day some years ago in Chicago's Logan Square neighborhood.  Ira S. Murfin and The Old Man entertained pigeons, passed out drunks, and loyal captive family at a free public reading we optimistically advertised as Two Murfins, No Waiting.

Nobody Writes Poetry About August

 

Oh sure, gush about your May mornings,

your dazzling June, even your soggy April.

Haul out your Roget’s for September ripening grain,

          October umber and amber, November crisp air.

Let crystal December dazzle your eyes,

          and wallow in some January bleak mid-winter.

Maybe if it weren’t for lovers February, short and wretched,

          might fare worse—who can rhyme it anyway?

 

But who writes paeans and odes to August?

 

Long days have lost their charm amid the swelter,

          birds gasp on telephone wires,         

          stray cats dance on asphalt,

          sweating lovers can’t be bothered,

          children crank and whine,

          strangers snap like match sticks

          and fill each other full of holes,

          the fucking lawn needs mowing—again.

 

Write about that, you damn poets.

          Go ahead—I dare you. 

 

 —Patrick   Murfin