I remember, in what passed that year for summer,
I had been reading books and smoking mind.
Tom Robbins’ Villa Incognito drummer
pla-bongad maidens, paying them in kind
for sake, kindness. I kept getting dumber,
imagining sense and ethics intertwined
although there was no evidence they did.
I dined on farm-fresh salmon, freeze-dried squid.

The Nordic storm inside my living room
fed on the rain lawn-tennis television
emitted. Ice floes threatened to entomb
the paddy-fields, and Jack Frost sneered derision.
A serene Serena braved the baseline flume,
excused a blinded-line-judge bad decision,
and hit a forehand through her blond foe’s pout,
and would have won, but was again rained out.

the year being remembered: Associated Press July 3, 2004
‘WIMBLEDON, England – A day after a pair of enthralling, three-set women’s semi-finals enlivened Wimbledon, unrelenting rain and uneven match-ups conspired to produce a dreary Friday on which neither men’s semi-final was completed.’