My well is dry and the old pump rusted and cracked

When the dust comes it fills the shallow trough.

As the wind drops it there

It clogs the pipe and rots its gasket.

Sitting on my porch in my chair, the rockers grating

on the sand that scours my boards, I watch the clouds for rain.

And they raise arching from the hill to the sun

With the whispy regularity of summer days.

And no soft cool wind, no rolling or thunder.

The dust stays on the wide cottonwood leaves.

Last year’s field lies pierced with the broken stalks of last year’s corn

This year’s field lies baked and bleached and swept.

Even the dog has suddenly grown old.

I water the geranium from the barrel.

And it has a bloom making in my dry

heart an agonizing hope.

And when a graying comes suddenly across the sun

I look up slowly with my

Pulses beating in my soul.

In the stagnant nights I dream of lush

spring showers flooding through the leaves,

Dripping on the roof in brushes with broad green leaves.

I dream of blowing trees and the angry black

black turmoil of the thunderhead

And the final consummating thunder.

But when I wake the dust has settled

on the blanket and the sun has risen

behind a red burned sky