August in Texas

After forty-four days of over 100°F temperatures in Dallas this summer (twenty-one of them consecutive) we are finally getting a break from the excessive heat. The high in Richardson today is only 93°. Those of you who haven’t lived in this particular level of hell might be thinking, “Does seven degrees really make that much of a difference?”

Yes. Yes it does.

There are a few clouds in the sky today and a breeze. My outdoor cats are playing rather than sleeping under the porch all day, and I sat in the swing for a few minutes this afternoon without my shirt immediately sticking to my skin. We are not done with our 100+ days; they will continue into September. But today’s blissful 93° reminds me that autumn still exists somewhere, and it will visit us eventually. That’s a good feeling.

This summer’s unusually oppressive heat reminds me of a poem I wrote several years ago. This tritina was first published in the Texas Poetry Calendar in 2015. I wrote this one when I lived in Austin, so a few details no longer apply. The African dust doesn’t seem to affect this area as much, and we don’t have to watch out for rattlesnakes in our neighborhood here. Instead of limestone peeking out from the parched ground, here the dry earth opens up during the summer, cracking into deep ravines that will twist your ankle if you’re not careful. But the sentiment of the poem remains the same. We’re all holed up in the AC, waiting out these oven-like afternoons, appreciating all the under-100 days we get, and looking forward to the first real signs of fall.

August in Texas
	by Carie Juettner

Dust from Africa hovers in the Texas sky,
turning the cloudless blue into a gritty gray,
filling my lungs with a sleepy silt that rattles

when I breathe. I suck in air, listen to the rattle
of the mower next door, kicking brown exhaust into the sky,
and glance at the thermometer—one hundred degrees in the gray

shadow of the porch. August is a heavy month—heavy heat, heavy gray
stones peeking out from the dead grass where a rattle-
snake coils in the shade of a rosemary bush, her tongue tasting the sky.

I squint at the sky, eyes burning in the gray sunlight, heart rattling for September.