Dog days

The slow sweltering Sirius days. Deep summer, deep green canopy full of crisp edged leaves. Their whisper contains a rasp borne on equatorial winds.

The new swifts are scything high, muscles training for the hot wind home. One bright morning soon the sky will be bereft, their minaret call to wake, traded for a long silence.

And the dappled light of the river calls me, its summer song a quiet murmur to itself. Hard to hear its tales of the egret and the fisher of kings, the green fingers of trailing willow and the sharp shadow hidden fish.