How Late It Is

The medieval city of Carcassonne (France); ©Luc Viatour GFDL / CC

Nebraska August



What is August but a kind of wandering,
unwelcome interruption, like a drunk who
trips into a deacons’ meeting? Summer in
Nebraska waxes temperamental—cross,
unkempt, and trigger-happy after tossing
through the night, or kind and gentle if she
slept surrendered to the early portents
in the wind; becoming smug and cheeky 
in the afternoon, enraged by evening,
giving vent to fits of fury, still resisting
her impending impotence.

Unpredictably she spits out lightning
though the day came in so sweet. She isn’t
having any of it, wants to get her 
licks in. Watch her pick a fight: She needs
the stimulation if she has to
soldier on.

The days are blistering, the nights are cooler,
noticeably longer now. At two a.m.
you wake up cold and add a quilt against
the wind. A surly storm is riding in,
dispensing random lashes in a burst of
petulance that drenches shrub and lawn. The
tempest is so quickly gone you wonder
if you dreamt it, but come dawn the evidence
is everywhere: The sodden air is thick with
scents of ripeness edging toward decay —
apples fallen, left behind, and trodden
on, tomatoes, cucumbers, and pomegranates
that have split their skins, admitting
hummingbirds to feast in unaccustomed 
excess. Plump and sated, they veer drunkenly
away to rest wherever hummingbirds
recline in lazy satisfaction. Tidy
lines of ants make haste to haul away the
banquet’s residue (in nature, nothing
goes to waste).

It might be said that summer dreads the coming
autumn; she regrets her wanton ways,
forgets her manners, and abandons her
decorum. August never gets her full
attention. In July she was a gleeful
dancer, vain and self-indulgent, soaking
hill and plain in sun and shower, cultivating
for herself a pretty carpet as a
cushion for her toes when pivoting, a
bower for her leisure, brief as it
might be.


Exhausted now, she sees her labors are
unfinished. August always finds her unprepared,
bedraggled, spirits sagging as the heavens
pay no heed to her authority, now
that she has the greatest need to rein them
in. Experimenting with their freedom,
Saturday they sizzle, Sunday whip up
clouds of dust, and Monday tease with distant
thunder, scant precipitation, not enough
to stiffen drooping leaves or keep the grass from
yellowing.

August is a long-neglected child who
hungers for attention. Summer can’t
oblige. Her energy is spent and she has
little interest anyway in this
unwished-for daughter. Gathering her strength to
battle destiny, she won’t admit that
the conclusion is ordained and so she
lies in wait and August goes undisciplined
again. But Nature’s pity saves the thirsty
stems grown dull and brittle though the atmosphere
is sultry and the surfaces of leaves 
are damp.

August in Nebraska is an edgy
interval that never settles; it would
resurrect the past, the month of May
perhaps. It cannot have its way, and so it
takes as its revenge the little water
that remains and breaks the steady rhythm
that was fixed when green and growing things
began their slow emergence under icy
winter skin. Nature knew what she was
doing when she planted cottonwoods and
sycamores and hardy hedges giving
shelter to the crickets and the katydids
who sing with no idea what the lyrics
are: “How late it is. How late it is. How
late it is.”