I’m not a meteorologist, but I do predict that this hot and humid weather won’t let up any time soon; I’ve lived here long enough in southeast Georgia to know better. But this ungodly heat won’t stop me from my regularly scheduled activities, however, which include morning yoga sessions, watering my mother’s plants, and going to work and marking off another day on my huge wall calendar in my office which my co-worker remarked made me look like a prisoner waiting to be released.

Jokes on him, though, because I’m staying put: what other job gives me my very own column space where I ramble on and on about the weather and share cool poems?

CBS Evening News could never.

Anyways, here is a poem for the week that I found on poetryfoundation.org. Stay cool, stay hydrated, and use sunscreen!

The Layers, Stanley Kunitz

 I have walked through many lives, some of them my own, and I am not who I was, though some principle of being abides, from which I struggle not to stray.

When I look behind, as I am compelled to look before I can gather strength to proceed on my journey, I see the milestones dwindling toward the horizon and the slow fires trailing from the abandoned camp-sites, over which scavenger angels wheel on heavy wings.

Oh, I have made myself a tribe out of my true affections, and my tribe is scattered!

How shall the heart be reconciled to its feast of losses?

In a rising wind the manic dust of my friends, those who fell along the way, bitterly stings my face.

Yet I turn, I turn, exulting somewhat, with my will intact to go wherever I need to go, and every stone on the road precious to me.

In my darkest night, when the moon was covered and I roamed through wreckage, a nimbus-clouded voice directed me: “Live in the layers, not on the litter.”

Though I lack the art to decipher it, no doubt the next chapter in my book of transformations is already written.

I am not done with my changes.

Andrea Gutierrez is the managing editor of the Bryan County News.