Summer Cold–Sounds like an oxymoron, right? Well–poet Keith Tornheim will explain.

Keith Tornheim

Summer Cold?

My hacking cough would have scared

small children―fortunately ours are grown―

a deliberate, not involuntary, explosion

in an attempt to clear the airway

of the accumulated dripping down my throat.

My head feels only mildly stuffed;

the blown debris from nasal passages,

caught in Kleenex after Kleenex,

is barely discolored and only sometimes,

less yellow than the film of pollen on the cars.

So I’d thought it was all just allergies

until I gave it to my wife.

― Keith Tornheim