Oceanic Desert Heat

6/19/05

Summer heat is different. It heats your clothes, your skin, but somehow you feel the heat is still external, escapable, like opening the oven door, it washes over you then fades. The desert heat on the ocean isn’t searing. Desert heat creeps up on you. It has stamina. You wake up in the morning feeling warm, not really aware that it coming for you, a cool complacency. Slowing the burning pierces the sky, obliterates any traces of clouds. The atomic fire lights up the burnt landscape where only the cactus seems oblivious to the slow siege. It stalks you slowly, warming the soil, the deck of the boat, the water around you. Then before you know it, the air takes sides with the sky fire and wraps around you like a hot damp towel, basting you, melting you. The sadistic watch the temperature gauge as it climbs past the 100 degree mark in the sun. The desperate seek relief in the water, only to find they’ve been tricked into jumping into a hot salty bath. The desert heat is different. It has been here since time started, burning, burning, tearing apart molecules breaking down all bonds leaving nothing.