Drought

When we have run our passion's heat,
Love hither makes his best retreat

In Spring, thaw and rain and promise:
lilies beard the good ground
with new growth, blossom garlands
apples tree and pear,
myrtle makes heroic once again
green shade. And in me risings too,
shoots exploring correspondences
to sunlight, soil in spirit dancing.

But here, this August, earth's fragrant plush
now petrifies, is death:
slugs crisp to tinder in hot darkness,
worms to ribbons of husk,
orphan bulbs to onion skins
cauling nothing.

It is not in me, steerer of waters,
tilth-tiller singing in rows,
to read clay's wide cracks, make sense
of soil's requiem runes.
I stand with hands heavy
as infants' gravestones in my pockets,
stand among wilts and rottings,
watching the world make harder
its own strange way.

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Copyright © 2017 Richard Hague All rights reserved
from Sequences & Long Poems
Dos Madres Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission