Memories Of The Seasons Poem by Barry Middleton

On a Florida summer afternoon,
I try to bring inside the heat
of soupy air I work through tired lungs.
My air is a studied breath,
is inspiration to unravel
the tired knots of memory.
Breath,
the lifetime poem,
comes to this,
the hot and the cold,
the bright and the dark,
the wet and the dry.
It is easy to think of extremes
in Florida.
I work to breathe
as beads of sweat condense
on forehead and neck
and beads of memory drip
like water drops
from my exhausted air conditioner.
The waters grow memories
of hot and cold,
of birth and death,
of love and loss.
The heat reminds me
of the heat of long ago
and strangely of the cold to come.
The heat reminds me
I am alive on borrowed time.
I remember the childish heat
of August at home in Mississippi,
and the weary heat
of sixty beloved summers.
In a nearby oak
a cousin of a remembered squirrel
lies flat on a limb
and pants to cool its small brain
and dreams of fall and fat acorns
while I fight for air to fuel a few more
memories of the seasons.