California is suffering from a severe drought. I have lived
there twice in my life and I remember the dry and the wet. I also believe that
if each of us who reads this blog, would spend just a moment visualizing a wet
California then some relief will take place. Give it a try, we have nothing to
lose and perhaps confirmation of the power of thought.
It reminded me of a poem I wrote years ago about the Texas
drought and the devastation to their corn crop.
Season of the Dry
“They’ll die some more today,”
he said, hitching up his overalls.
The dry steals life, leaf by
leaf, when green bows to beige.
“Does the green go where it’s
wet?” he wondered,
“Is heaven wet and green?
Maybe it will rain today,” he
thought,
and shook his head in
disbelief at the season of the dry.
He stepped out on the porch
and looked upon the field:
weakened stalks of corn, in
amber tilting wilt,
a bending supplication to the
sun.
A momentary tear welled
within his eye
but passed just as quickly in
the scorching dry.
“I’ll be with the corn,” he
said, moving down the path.
Sarah watched him go, slowly,
reverent, to the corn,
like walking to a coffin
respectful of the dead.
She knew his heart was
saddened, his step told her that.
Each seed, each kernel, a
part of him, a planted child,
no given name, but Corn, yet
nurtured, and loved,
even as the end came creeping
in the season of the dry.
He moved, stepping gently,
tender, softly between the rows,
his hands on either side, outstretched
in touch,
feeling for the green of life
suckled deep within each stalk
protecting root and source
from the searing, barren
crust.
“The rain must come,” he
said, “to end the season of the dry.”
Then he stood in middle
field, surrounded by a leafy wail.
Each plant had spots and
withered wrinkles,
long below their time,
each holding to an
expectation and reservoir of hope,
waiting for the irrigation
that nature’s spirit springs
upon a season of the dry.
When all that’s left is trust.
69
It might have been the heat
or maybe something else,
but soon the farmer’s
weathered heart
became the mendicant,
pleading to a sentient earth,
“Let the water flow.
I know there is some moisture
here, some hiding healing rain,
so needed in this parching
scorch in the season of the dry.”
“Send the rain,” he prayed, “erase
the baking scars,
the tempered cracks of heat
that leave their open wounds
stretched long upon the arid
fractured loam.
Corn and weed cannot compete,”
he thought,
“weakness saps their
strength.
They find a way to die
together, in the season of the dry.”
Standing there, his waist
above the waste, he sobbed.
No one could see his tears,
nor his heaving sigh.
“Farmers aren’t supposed to
cry,” he thought,
“just sow and reap, not weep.
If it doesn’t rain tomorrow,
I’ll have to plow them under, deep,
underneath the dry.”
Later, coming home, he
stopped, to find a masking smile.
“Sarah needn’t know,” he
thought, only that he’d paid respects
to the corn he’d hoped to
grow, before it went to ground.
She watched him through the
screen and opening the door,
she smiled faintly in return,
as she kissed him on the cheek
and wiped away a telling
streak from the season of the dry.
