Barren Wind

Summer

A gentle swish – cools skin, dries clothes, then a loud crack, a

howl, a shriek – unable to determine if human or nature – then

flying dust, eyes no longer able to discern direction or location,

lodged with crust. Blue skies disappeared replaced by a steel wool

skyline. Porchlights intended as beacons hidden by eternal dust

smothering hope. Wind screams, pierces eyes, displaces abused

topsoil, dissolves futures. Gone are amber waves of grain, lowing

cattle, fresh milk. Crops replaced by clods like clotted blood.

Uprooted Russian thistles tumble toward slumping fences. Rivers

of sandpaper. Families awakened coughing, spewing cylinders of

clotted dust as if pencils. Old people with calloused hands and red

eyes silent when asked questions as once again the wind continues

its assigned task.


Winter

Wind whistles under eaves searching for an escape as branches

      lash and trunks tilt

then tumble. Wind penetrates hunger and fear. Families separated

      one from the

other – forcing decisions of whose life more precious. Children’s

      memories seared

from the wind, the snow, the mounds outside the homes burying

      fathers, brothers.

Mothers understood this longing for relief and would have

      followed were it not

for her children whom she twisted away so they could not see.

      Then watched the

barren fields where rocks replaced crops and cattle bones waited to

      be discovered.