Child-crafted clouds, all sheen and fleece and curlicues,
as a girl, with her tongue in her teeth, would have made them,
the point of her crayon squashed against the page.
One came across the mountains, then another came;
one shadow of one ran across the grass and then another;
but the small apple tree and even the great maples
flagged in a heat that hung like rain,
that grayed the air with sweat under
the stark, flat, white medallion of the sun;
a swimmer’s heat that even the woman on the porch steps
panted in. Still, she would not go in the pond.