John Gould Fletcher

From “Down the Mississippi”

AS if the sun had trodden down the sky,

Until no more it holds air for us, but only humid vapor,

The heat, pressing upon earth with irresistible languor,

Turns all the solid forest into half-liquid smudge.

The heavy clouds, like cargo-boats, strain slowly up ’gainst its current;

And the flickering of the heat haze is like the churning of ten thousand paddles

Against the heavy horizon, pale blue and utterly windless,

Whereon the sun hangs motionless, a brassy disk of flame.