Summer

Its hot.

The summer sun produces shimmering and oiled rays when it hits the pavement.

But I'm not on the pavement, I'm in my backyard and it wont be hot enough in muggy Missouri to produce those humid arcs that signify hard to breathe hot when the sun hits the ground until mid August.

But it is hot.

I breathe in heat.

The sun is delicious.

And the smoke of charcoal holds some promise.

The barbecue pit is going, and so I go inside to finish the sides.

Invaluable, the asset of a cool potato salad best to a perfectly seasoned and tender bar-b-cued anything.

anything.

Beef falling off the bone.

Chicken marinated in seasoning and barbecued to perfection.

I prefer turkey bratwurst. Its mild. And it has this texture that is just right perfect lean seasoned and yum.

To compliment a salad or just vegetables on the side would be perfection.

Cool radishes.

Olives, banana peppers and or pickles thrown in a simple bed of lettuce and tomato with sun dried tomato and feta cheese ranch, just a dribble or a raspberry vinaigrette, perhaps.

Its hot.

The cool counters are gleaming and I can't decide, to be healthy and finish the day with pomegranates and apples or indulge in cake and ice cream with an A&W cream and root beer soda to side. It is my birthday, so I will choose both.

Setting the cake aside for an after dinner compliment."just a sliver", I tell myself.

The smoke has developed the smell of woodsy, an authentic intermingling of primitive and modern collides as the beef sizzles and the chicken simmers, the air is heavy with heat and spices.

Its hot.

Cool water with ice and sweat falling in sparkling beads from the glass, with a whole lemon chopped and thrown in is a nice compliment and stay for a rumbling stomach.

We always starve before celebratory meals. My people and I.

I am involved in a heated debate about what intolerance and entitlement actually is with my Jewish friend who claims that one must be authentically of a genetic minority to face discrimination. To which a look from my white native to American face, like really native with my long beak of a nose should put the silence to, but it doesn't.

I tell him, could he imagine being someone with roots in variant cultural identities but belonging to none, and he laughs with the derision of one who has no concept of belonging to no one at all, yet clearly labeled. By whatever epitaph happens to fit.

I tell him that discrimination as a legal term is irrelavant to circumatances and that it I am above and beyond said debates.

We laugh, we know that all has its problems.

The table is wood.

The food is rushed to the table and each taste coincides and compliments the other.

I am a meat eater, so I have all three.

Chicken, beef, and bratwurst with salad, potato salad and sides of olives, nuts, cheese, and fruit.

The cooler holds juices and sparkling waters, some with some vitamin enhanced and some merely flavors.

After lunch, the day is for fruit.

Watermelon is pink, sweet, and fleshy. The texture running through my sensory delighted mind while the sweetness trickles down my throat.

Cantaloupe, has that texture with that unique and mild sweet that is like a satisfying afterthought which is a perfect compliment.

Grapes and honey-crisp apples leave sticky sweet faces and contentment. The apples are a favorite the meat of the fruit variant to the names. Envy, honey crisp, gala, and big red.

Its hot and laughter and delight wanes in the languid afternoon.

As I tuck the leftovers in the fridge and in take home plates I contemplate my lovely layered cake.

And this is divinity.