Hot

Hot in San Francisco today. I mean you can't wear a jacket or sweater hot. This is our summer. I'm sipping Peet's coffee over ice and enjoying the feeling of my bare feet on the cool wood floor. I opened the back door. I put on shorts.

Wood floors stay cool in hot weather. In the house I grew up in, my bedroom was on the top floor under the slanting roof. It got very hot. I don't know how many people had air conditioning in those days, but we just had one big ceiling fan in the middle of the house. On hot nights in summer, back then, I'd lie in the nude on my floor.

Once I put this interesting bit in a poem. It was years ago, at Squaw, in Sharon Olds's workshop. I remember she scolded me: If I wanted to talk about masturbation, I should just say it. This I found very funny, because I hadn't thought about that at all, neither back then nor when writing the poem. I just wanted the coolness of the floor.

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Bees are buzzing. Monarchs are migrating.