Now it’s truly summer,
12 days after the solstice
as the dome descends

like a cone of silence
quieting the neighborhood,
driving most everyone

indoors but the cats,
more lizard than feline
this time of year—

especially my big dumb
boy cat who prefers
outside despite the scary

orange swaths on the
weather map predicting
111 today, over the century

mark for the next week.
Which makes it as perfect
water weather as it was

for long-ago little girls in
1960s one-pieces and zoris
flip-flopping down the path

to the lake across the un-
sidewalked rural road at
our new house for our

first swims in cobalt water,
nothing like the Southern
California swimming pools

we’d known. Nothing like
the heat either, with Mother
grateful for any kind of relief,

even though we were as dry
as we started walking back
up the hot path, turning us

into lizards luxuriating under
blazing sun, our noses pinkening,
blonde hair then as white

as mine is now. As I take
my old self to the pool for
a tepid nighttime swim,

as, yes, the thermometer
climbs ever higher in
this new century,

Ah, but give it time.
It will fall again.
It will fall.