Heat has worn the speaker down, and the poem starts with blunt, almost comic honesty. He sweats, splashes water on his body, lies naked on the bed, farts and sighs. Even the dogs are flat on their backs, too exhausted to sniff the air. The tone is frank and unembarrassed, a kind of happy shamelessness.
Then the poem shifts to small scenes of cooling off. The lemonade is so cold he chokes on it, and a crow hops into a clay pan to splash in the water, enjoying itself just as he would. Human and animal share the same need for relief.
That leads to a daydream: he wishes he were a fish, swishing his tail with mermaids. The mood turns sharply in the last lines. Fish are dying, and so are birds and bees, and he says we will follow. The playful, sleepy heat becomes a quiet warning, and the poem ends on an uneasy note, as if the discomfort of one hot day hints at something larger.