Pool Haiku

It has been beastly hot here. Sweltering, melting, sweating, dripping, sticky, icky, hot. The kind of hot that makes eye glasses fog up when getting out of an air conditioned car. The kind of hot that makes children cranky and anyone with sense stays out of the sun. I really felt for the boys collecting shopping carts from the parking lot. A hard day for lifeguards, mail carriers, and road crews. Air conditioners could not keep up. My fingers were all pruney when I took off the gloves at work, there was so much sweat inside them.

When I got home from work and minor errands I lay on the couch cooling off. I watched the super talented children on So You Think You Can Dance and wondered how anyone could pick a favorite. It was nine o'clock before I went out to the pool area. It was delicious to uncoil the hose to water the plants and talk to each of them, calling them by name. Here you go, Tomato, here's a drink for Fuchsia, and Marigold, I am so proud of you.

Walking into the pool was like walking into a large tepid tub, not bracing at all, just relaxing and soft. I made myself do about ten minutes of exercise in the shallow end before I took a foam noodle out to the deep end. Back and forth like a water skeeter on surface then I abandoned the flotation device and just lay on my back looking up at the sky. It has been so humid that only a few stars shone and I found myself wondering if someone was floating on those far away pinpoints of light. I'd like to think so.

I started writing Haiku in my head. Five syllables for the first and third line and seven for the second. Haiku is the perfect form of poetry for me, short. Buoyant in the water, nope that is six syllables. Like an otter, she floats, nope six again.

Otter-like she floats, 

Buoyant, writing poetry, 

Counting syllables.

Machinery hums,

Blessed coolness behind doors,

Wet, I feel no chill.

Ears under water,

Alone in sheer abandon,

So glad blubber floats!

Friends in hot places,

Drink water, make plans to move.

Northern winter calls.