Wisconsin Dog Days

Chicago was pounded with rain from Beryl even though it sits nowhere close to the ocean. Sometimes we, too, get the moisture associated with remnants of a hurricane this far north and this far inland.

Wisconsin Dog Days

A deck wet not with the dregs

of an overnight shower but simply

the humidity. Too far removed

from the rain tentacles of the season's

first hurricane - Beryl. Dew point

at dawn over 70. An Eastern Wood

Pewee languidly greets the day.

On my right, a sweating sun dipped

in molten gold emerges past

the horizon. To my left, wildfire haze,

drifting from half-a-continent away,

advances with the wind.

Marilyn Aschoff Mellor