Today's poem is by James Davis May

The Patron Saint of Heat Waves
        Paris, 98°F, 5th floor, no air conditioning

All the trademark landmarks looked turbid
and blurred, like company logos
engraved on melting chocolate.

The wine was room temperature,
so hot, and the Seine slowed
until it was still as a drainage ditch.

Had this been in the other direction,
even if the floorboards had frosted over
and the pipes had bulged with ice,

we could have piled together under
the blankets and entered the making
of a happy memory, body heat winning.

But this heat wasn't as relentless
as it was omnipresent, the floor feeling
just as warm as our bare legs

because it was. "Maybe this is the secret
to a really twisted damnation,"
I said. "Hell will be beautiful

but unbearable." I thought of punishments
for not loving the world enough
and how often I cancel its celebration

with sadness that feels less like an illness
than a comfortable addiction.
Instead of sleeping, we sweated

almost motionless, and that was lucky
because we got to hear and feel the heat
break at 4, a cold blast punching back

the windows with all the indignant conviction
of some cast-out saint returning
to the wretched and once-ungrateful,

his only message a simple question:
Were we still worried about whatever
it was we were before he left?

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Copyright © 2023 James Davis May All rights reserved
from Presence: A Journal of Catholic Poetry
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission