Heat

Birds wheel, raucous

on the cool air

that will shortly burn away

as sun muscles

through the tracery of leaves

outside my window, its

heat hurled like arrows

shot by some elder god,

harsher than the cacophony

of birds darting

through the green, their wings

limned against a blue

that is already transmuting

from crystal to crucible

as dawn evaporates

into the vanishing point

of summer…
.

© Helen Lowe

—

The current NZ summer is under the sway of the sou’wester, which means it’s cool and bleak — but friend and fellow Supernatural Underground author, Kim Falconer, has been writing to me about the heat where she lives in northern New South Wales (Australia.)

The eternal sunshine of hotter climes

As this poem was written in response to exactly that heat, as experienced in Queensland, it seemed a good time to reprise it.

Otherwise, I’m busy doing tax stuff. Hardly a fun start to the new year, but it needs to be done and I prefer to get it done and dusted now, immediately following the break, rather than build up writing momentum only to stop again.

Cooler climes but still with charm — wish I was there and not doing paperwork!

So if you’re still on holiday, or having a relatively relaxed return-to-work, spare a thought for yours truly. You probably won’t find me, though, since my sector of Nu Zild is engulfed by the storm clouds of tax-related gloom and despair. (Tax and related matters being the antithesis of the Life Creative, you understand.)