In Australia it is Summer again. The Adelaide morgue is full; more than 70 people dead.
The city pretends a day long siesta and breathes with life after dark.
Even magpies stand, beaks open, panting in the shade.

Last night it was hot again, a dark swelter between two more 40+ days. I locked myself out of the house. Resigned to waiting, I hosed myself down and sat, dripping, on the front step, adjusting to the dark, chilling. The sky looked like black granite, improbable clouds marbling the sky. The moon, a bead of sweat sliding down its surface. The landscape was black on black, like a Balinese shadow theatre, or a black paper diorama. The prunus webbed the foreground, standing over an unkempt bramble of seeding herbs and flowers. Eucalypts and willows in the creek were velvet nothings. A cat stepped cautiously on the hot bitumen road, but the dogs were silent, out the back, lying flat. Precise sounds carried across long distances. An unseen nightbird called. A gate creaked. Gruff sounds of traffic on the freeway were overpowered by a symphony of crickets. It was quite beautiful.

Tonight I am thinking of trees in Victoria. My sister has been evacuated from her home. It sits on the edge of a national park. A quaint old timber home surrounded by tall trees and bird life, not far from the upper reaches of the Yarra River. The heat and wind are persistent. The bushfires must be intense.

Tomorrow we hope for a change in the weather. It seems foolish to hope for rain.
It is hard to imagine the Queensland flooding.
Incongruent climate.

     thunderydawn
               a
      precipitationblesses
      u        e         t
      d  wet   r   new   r
      d        f         e
      l  eye   a   sky   a
      e        l        mm
      s        l         s   

      --------------------
      Precipitation,
      Lindy and her house are safe.
      Our thoughts with Kinglake.


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