Heat Bugs

Cicadas. Burnt grass, sharp as razors. The inside of a raspberry bush. Gravel stuck in my sandal and pants that won't stay up. The long exhale after a day watching the horizon wobbling and bouncing in the heat. The sting of sweat in your eyes and the smell of evergreen shrubs as the field rises, outcroppings and gopher holes, and a view across the creek that constricts your throat and the dust that hides newly minted tracks and lazy ant-hill meanderings following the sun as it beats on your neck. Four new rocks for the collection and a rash of poison-ivy that means a cool bath in baking soda, with an upside down view of the stars through the sky-light and one last look into the night, sitting side by side on the back step trying to stay awake to see one more fire-fly and to hear the bull frogs singing from the edge of a day that seemed short in the way that sadness seems long. I'm half way there and I'll be home soon.