It must have something to do with canine constellations
and dog days dragging in late season frustrations,
this love-hate thing I have with August, making it
in my estimation the armpit of summer.

My reasons likely make no sense, but the eighth month
is a bit of a bummer, despairing me with merciless monotony,
then impairing me with restive melancholy,
this month made hellish with heat and haze,
sticky humidity and languid days.

It’s a month when gardens ripen short of reaping,
when vacations wane in the weeks preceding
the start of school and return to work, when sports
overlap and wasps go berserk, crazy with hunger.
August makes me lament that I’m not younger, too,
when payment for the pleasures of June and July
come due, and my mind grows impatient for something new.

It’s a month of time dribbling down in drips,
of grass burned brown and brittle as twigs,
of days that sour by mid-afternoon and nights
grown longer in increments of gloom. August crawls
thirty-one days into September and an inevitable fall,
making me feel every minute of its month long,

but how I wish I could have it—heat, humidity, and all,
once February arrives and reminds me why
I dream of August again despite its flaws.


© by Mike Orlock.
Used with the author’s permission.