Heat

(Summer Landscape by Paul Klee, 1879-1940,
Swiss painter)

The dog days of summer, those very hot days in July and August, get their name from Sirius or the Dog Star, the brightest star in the Great Dog constellation. The Romans believed the star added to the heat as it rose with the sun.

HEAT

O wind, rend open the heat,
cut apart the heat,
rend it to tatters.

Fruit cannot drop
through this thick air —
fruit cannot fall into heat
that presses up and blunts
the points of pears
and rounds the grapes.

Cut the heat —
plough through it,
turning it on either side
of your path.

~ H. D., born Hilda Doolittle (1886-1961), American Imagist poet and novelist