On One More Drought Day

by John Grey

Wind whispers why the rain won't come
to brown wheat,
to bony cattle,
to falling fence posts.

In the sweltering bar,
beer, underwear crackle,
random hugs eschew the feral hormone smell.

Beneath the rickety bridge,
old shoes ride brown current
to the death.

Weatherman flutters about
on a storefront television,
paints the screen a torrid red.

Wind whistles through
the silence of the cop
steering his car in circles.
July thickens his brow
with gluey sweat.

On melting sidewalks,
by dried up marshlands
and burnt-out gardens,
old men, heads buried in each other's,
whisper the past into better shape
than the searing present.