Guerilla Sun

The sun is still daily beating down on us. The trails at work are dried up and cracking. The ditch I used to have to ford or wade through I now just walk over, it's dry too.

On the trail to work someone has planted a little patch of vegetables. Guerrilla gardening. Like the sun that sneaks up, ramps it up to full while we sleep. Guerrilla sun.

I can no longer dig deeply enough to find worms to feed to the little snakes. Next door to us a tree has turned yellow, then brown, then dropped its leaves. Some of the Parks may have to be closed because of the hazard of fire. Time passes so quickly, time passes so slowly.

This morning I needed bananas. I have to eat bananas because of the blood pressure pills, but I ran out days ago. In this heat they speckle up almost overnight. I crossed the road to the greengrocer's opposite the Park, it was ten to nine.
'Are you open?' I ask,
'Yes,' says the man, but they're not. Yes is just the English word he knows.

I go and sit on the verge, watching the sky and the trees, watching the ballet of set-up as the man and then a woman and then ever increasing numbers of Chinese people appear from nowhere and scoop up pallets with fruit and vegetables, scoop them with the arms of miniature forklifts, set down, rotate, align, assemble.
Other customers gather and from time to time, the man who knows the word 'yes' smiles as he passes me and says, 'sorry,' but he isn't.

I think I'll go back later, but I never do. I wilt although my office is cool. I feel like I'm the only person to discover that if you keep the lights off and open the windows, the room stays cooler.