Drought

Drought is neither a regular cycle of events nor something new, as man has looked to the skies for water for thousands of years. And from time to time the water does not come. Over millennia, the human race has had to tough it out and adjust or die or migrate to fertile land. So it goes still.

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All Poetry copyright MyFairLadyah - Reprint with Permission

Inspired by the Texas Drought 2011

Fallow fields thirst for nature's dew

And miss the farmers long departed

Straight deep troughs that once ran through

Bring nothing to let a seed be started

Amber grass blows down in the stiff winds

That come unbidden to the parched land

The lease on a pleasant life God rescinds

From the creatures, too, who must disband

Hot, so hot, the sun bakes the cracked earth

Etching dry crevices into a brown mosaic

We are saddened and sickened by such dearth

A landscape of beauty now dull and prosaic

Beware the errant spark, little more than ash

Igniting the firestorm over the sere plain

Licking morsels of people's cherished cache

As daily weather maps stay devoid of rain

Elsewhere torrents besiege the rivers

Flooding streets; cars and wreckage afloat

T'would be wonderful should the water givers

Come hither and share what's so remote

Yet should a deluge come from off the Coast

The barren ground would drink its fill

And the tiller may lift a glass in toast

For being blessed with what's there still

The sick baby is crying

What can her mother do?

All the hungry mouths are vying

For the insufficient relief food

Sent by big hearts in the G8

And some other folks with cash

Corne de l'Afrique; a desperate state

Dead animals, hunger, societal crash

Always, drought begets famine

And famine begets a wasting death

True remedies we must examine

Before baby breathes her last breath

Who can say why climate is so stubborn and so fickle

Here there is too much water

There, there is too little

In the South West US

2011 brings record drought to Texas

At the same time

Record rains drench the East Coast

In Africa, drought brings famine and death

Atop the miseries of poverty and disease

Give yourself the gift of having fresh flowers from your garden with these drought tolerant flower seeds