It’s A Dry Heat

A dry heat crackles,
parches the pale and spiny desert.
In the red-rock lands
of colossal clouds
that stride the sky like gods–
lit with sunlight, shadows, sometimes
hearts aflash with lightning glows
and casting the colored laughter
of rainbows in curtains
that never touch the ground.

Warm, essence of sage and mesquite on the air…

Dry heat shatters:
The storm, relentless,
a vivid line between the wet and dry,
audibly advancing;
the potent male rains come on
hissing over sand and rock, enveloping,
drenching, pummeling the ground,
and flinging floods down canyon creeks,
clearing stony channels
of the casual detritus
of more desultory days…

Sharp, the spicy scent of rain on rock…

Dry-heat skies,
brilliant and blue,
Mares’ tails drifting high,
plumes promising
the coming of
a low grey-blanket sky
woven of misty female rains
quiet, slow, and patient,
the saturating grace of water
that quickens quietly and deeply
the baking soils.

Cool aromas breathing from the earth…

Dry heat glimmers
off freshly brightened greens,
darkened greys and reds;
Bright gems of blossoms, fragrant,
overnight a-bloom, 
across the land,quenching
the persistant,
deepest thirst
of eye and heart,
in the desert’s
quivering dry heat.

Savory, sweet and stony, the desert breath…

June 2021