The Beating Heart of Summer Slows

the beating heart of summer
slows in torpid heat
of weeks with no rain—

a searing sirocco
melts the sun, vanishing
in lakebed molten

wildfire haze, orange
torn by too red-hot—
one glance brands its floating

shape into the retina,
wavers a frantic dance
behind the lid for hours,

calms only when dust unites
with earth again in wet veils
enclosing afternoon

with evening showers,
skittering monsoons
that patter, falter, stop and start

Rachel White is the author of a poetry chapbook, The Velvet Earth After Rain (Moon in the Rye Press, 2024), selected as a “Notable Read” by the Utah Humanities Book Awards. She co-founded and edits THE NOMAD Literary Journal, the-nomad.org. Her poems have appeared in Sugar House Review, Deseret Magazine, Dark Mountain, The Ecological Citizen, and elsewhere. Rachel grew up in Ogden, Utah and lives in Davis County. rachelwhitepoetry.org