The August in Rome Haiku

 

It’s brutal out there –
feels like getting cooked as you
walk on the pavement

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2026)

Note
Nothing but the not very poetic global warming truth.

The nicest thing about today haiku

Being out of the
sweltering mid-September 
heat having coffee.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2025)

Note
I could have been more precise and detailed to say that the coffee was a cappuccino and that I had it at a bar in an air-conditioned shopping center in Rome, Italy. But that would have bloated the haiku way beyond what’s allowed. I also could have said that it was more or less one of those Kristoffersonian Sundays Coming Down, but that would have really killed the poetic form, right?

Seems like a repeat

Dogs barking in the back alley
for invisible reasons (as if they
ever needed any),

fan whirring, installing a semblance of cool
in here while the immense summer heat
drags on into September.

While I’m trying to keep my cool
as I’m going through rows and rows
of written materials that would most likely
not be missed had they not been written.

But that’s what ya get paid for, me boy.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2024)

Note
This should be blunt enough not to require any explanation.

Part of Weary Outpourings of a Grump Ground Down by Life and Other Things.

Momentary account

   

Rome, July 31, 2024

Burning heat, sometimes
crying of children, howling
of dogs, power cuts.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2024)

Note
Razor-edge-of-time reporting from the climate change front.

T. S. was wrong

Thomas Stearns

was wrong:

July is the cruellest month,
sandwiched between June
and August, which are
almost as cruel if measured
by the unbearable heat here
in the Roman stone desert
which comes immensely
close to a waste land
every day from nine to five

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2023)

Note
A facetious shot at the beginning of T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land (1922). Otherwise razor edge reporting from the global warming front in Rome, Italy, on July 11, 2023.

A random hot summer observation haiku

Lolling in her seat,
right hand hung out the window
like a wilted leaf.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2022)

Note
Everything wilts in this seemingly endless summer heat.

The December in Rome haiku

Can’t believe I called
for air conditioning in June
now that I shiver.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2017)

Note
The truth and nothing but. Do you ever feel that there’s no possibility of too much heat when there’s (definitely!) too much cold? ... And Rome’s nothing compared to Moscow or Irkutsk!