Drought. Air wet, thick and useless. Heat cloisters us: rabbit-like, we become crepuscular in our habits.

Drought. Three hours before sunset, black-bodied dragonflies converge low over the lawns, a pattern of sustenance-seeking I cannot read.

Drought. Craneflies mate on the window screen, tail to tail. Later their deciduous legs dangle from the lattice, their body-husks fallen into the dead celosia.

Drought. The air cools. Night sounds return. And still the rain does not fall. Cloud promises pass over the city, over the heron flying west at hawk-height.

Drought. At the woodland’s edge we come upon a bride posing doe-still among warring stems of goldenrod and joe-pyeweed, bittersweet and loosestrife. Behind her, the fountain’s slow water is the color of goose shit, full of indifferent tadpoles. Frogs lie plastered to the thin mud.

Drought. Tangle of vervain, cattails, buttonbush, boneset camouflages the stream missing from under the footbridge. A carpet of poison ivy keeps fox grapes safe from certain mouths.

Drought. Sky careless blue, lindens proper silver. A man and a boy and a small willful car tumble down a seared hill. Noon chases after them.

Drought. Unpursued, a ragged swallowtail feeds on the phlox. This time of year’s a yellow lull too, since the schools are shut tight. I tell him, boredom is a luxury, like a watered lawn.

Drought—eased but not ended by downpours in the night. This morning, four sparrows dabble in a puddle, one chickadee preaches from a cherry tree, one robin gives the road the red baubles of its innards. This morning, from a bank of thistles and clover and wild chives, the same ragged swallowtail—or another torn just so—flits between three children and a mother, crosses traffic. This morning, from hickory and oak and maple a sun-wet drizzle dazzles over us all.

Not a true rain.

The school bus runs late.