(This summer seems to have passed without ever making its presence felt. Here is a story about a past one.)

It was so hot,
Venus thought she’d better not
venture outside her door.
She piled ice into her biggest pot
and put it on the floor
in front of the fan.
“Got to keep cool, if I can.”

Venus sat still in her chair,
waiting for cooler air,
running wrinkled fingers
through gray hair.
Beads of sweat lingered
at her brow.
“Got to keep cool, somehow.”

Ten were dead already.
The killer heat had held steady
at one hundred, one degrees.
Venus had begun to feel heady
and weak in the knees.
She hadn’t felt good all that day.
“Got to keep cool, someway.”

Venus soon dozed,
nodding gently, eyes closed,
not thinking of the melting ice
or the threat it posed,
thinking only of how nice
it is in the coolness of dreams,
of how cool everything seems.

Venus dreams of long-past days,
of sunbaths and gentle waves
from late morn to early noon
on the shore of Chesapeake Bay.
She dreams of picnics in late June,
and of having to decide whether to go
with either this or that beau.

Venus sees her husband’s face,
laughing in some unfamiliar place.
He had been gone for more than a year,
taking a love full of grace
that lacked all fear.
He turns to her with an outstretched hand,
and she begins to understand.

The blades of the fan continued to spin.
Tepid water sat where ice had been.

c. 1982 g. r. adams