The September sun beat down
like a fire-breathing dragon
burning the leaves fire-engine
red, leaving bathers burnt worse
than at the end of a four-day
Fourth of July holiday. Forty-
Two North soared past ninety
on its way to an Indian Summer
that didn’t need a killing frost
to scorch the earth. Global Warm-
ing sounded like a sweet, innocuous,
anachronistic euphemism coined
by a doddering, old, sentimental
fool when Global Sweltering And
All Seas Rising might do.