Jane Kenyon: Philosophy in Warm Weather

Chilly days are gone too soon. No longer than two weeks, the Philippine weather is back to being humid.

Living in a tropical country isn’t as good as it reads in books or looks in pictures.The sweltering heat makes it difficult to move around. It would take great motivation to step out and face the sun. As a lover of cloudy days myself, I find walking in sunshine unbearable.

In my quest to find the proper perspective when it comes to the long warm months that is inevitable for people living in the tropics, I found Jane Kenyon’s uplifting poem that casts a pleasant image of the otherwise annoying hot weather.

Here she describes how creatures rejoice as the heat envelopes them.

Philosophy in Warm Weather
Jane Kenyon

Now all the doors and windows
are open, and we move so easily
through the rooms. Cats roll
on the sunny rugs, and a clumsy wasp
climbs the pane, pausing
to rub a leg over her head.

All around physical life reconvenes.
The molecules of our bodies must love
to exist: they whirl in circles
and seem to begrudge us nothing.
Heat, Horatio, heat makes them
put this antic disposition on!

This year’s brown spider
sways over the door as I come
and go. A single poppy shouts
from the far field, and the crow,
beyond alarm, goes right on
pulling up the corn.

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**Full text of the poem lifted from Writer’s Almanac