The smell of sweat
Grows with the summer heat
Replacing the fragrance
Of spring
With smoldering embers
And feverish plumes
Coiling prickly threads
Woven into the phantom calico
Stretching its weight
Between skin & freshly pressed garments
Becoming damp and heavy
Yet still never quite burning away
Though the furnace blazes–
Water bottles appear
Again and again
Drained by chapped lips
Yet this thirst
Has made divots and trenches
Not so easily filled
Unless some magical oasis
Were to appear
Like a marbled well
Conjured by the heavens
That would never
Run dry