by Michael Bettencourt

Created on: August 10, 2008

DROUGHT

It's been in all the news,
it's been all the news.
Montage:
grey crepe of leaves
in surrendered fields
grey arcs of skin
in surrendering faces.
The wish prays for rain; the talk is dust.

I am sitting on the top step of the porch.
In front of me the lawn grizzles.
The sun drains the sky to bronze hot and flagrant.
It is noon.
The air smells branded.
I am snarled on the glittering nailheads
of the porch boards, my face grisailled.
What the fields are I am becoming.

I watch the horizon.
It sits in my eyes like a live coal.
Days pass; the porch boards cool,
then heat, smelling like stale bread,
then cool. My eyes never cool.

Then, as if the sky had burned so thin
the dark empty between stars ripped through,
black clouds liquefy the horizon
and my eyes steam and temper,
scattering flocks of lightning.

The air buckles, the porch boards twist,
the earth fissures into thousands of gullets.
I soak the water in and soak the water in
until life molts leaving
a sorrowless quiet,
all the filth and halves
for the moment outbound, gullied, broken.

The air is clean, tensile -
it strikes my eyes and they echo,
hollow and forged,
still and vibrant.

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