It shouldn’t have gone on like this— <br />the protracted days of dust <br />that rises like steam from the roads, <br />the pink-brown mist of grains <br />that cling to skin and hair <br />and clog the back of the throat. <br /> <br />I can taste its cruelness between <br />my teeth, crystals cutting like blades. <br />All we can do now is pray for rain. <br /> <br />Even the clouds mock me, bringing <br />promises they don’t intend to keep, <br />a subtle coyness locked in each shadowed crease, <br />hoarding the moisture we desperately need <br />in rough basins the wind has filled <br />with sand that powdered the leaves <br />in their infancy. <br /> <br />An oak tree spreads the rough entrails <br />of its roots across the ground. <br />They pull away as though in pain. <br />The ground is cracked; plates <br />of dried mud curl up like waves, the skin <br />of the earth suffering. <br />All we can do now is pray for rain. <br /> <br />At night the sky peels back its hood, <br />exposing scarlet specks, embers <br />in the soot, chastising the long <br />bony sickle of the moon that looks <br />as though it may unhook itself <br />and fall in a plume of grit. <br /> <br />In the morning the garbage men <br />will come and collect our obsolescence <br />from the curb, clattering the cymbals <br />of these clogged suburbs in the fuzzy dawn <br />while we reassemble the parched <br />archways of our solutions <br />and pray for rain.<br /><br />Caroline Misner<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/pray-for-rain/
