I was walking home today on deserted, disjointed eighteenth century brick sidewalks not even trying to outrun the clouds, my red umbrella soaked carmine by lazy drainpipes more than summer rain. I was black and white against the taverns and cafés, sheets of water coming and going like the butler in an early film, and it was strange to squeak the storm in my shoes, to see my tights darken with each splash and hardly feel the rain touch me at all for the nearly liquid thickness of the air.
I feel sad for the people who only live here during the year, I thought, because the summer is the city’s self-portrait: turgid, demanding, enveloping, frustrating, and irritatingly picturesque.
People who don’t know this place like I do hate it here in the summer. Then again, nobody writes poems in late August, only June.
Catherine L. Addington 