Drought
They said it was seven years
But that’s wishful numerology
For we were going on vacation in ‘53
And then again in ’58 because money was rain
With La Nina swirling out there without any of us knowing
Holding the Pacific’s water cold
Not letting any rain our way
Drying out four states and the whole north of a country
Killing age-old trees still memorial skeletons half a century later
Withering our cotton and corn and grain sorghum
Leaving nothing for cows or deer and rabbits
Browning our own food and killing the oleanders
Drying up the rivers
Letting you walk a mile in the sand
Where cool water used to run
Generational farms found their ends then
Their owners moving out or wrapping up operations
To drive to town or the oil fields for work
Transforming our little world to fruitless fields
From our house all the way almost to town
Leaving a half-dozen farmers where there had been fifty
When the rains came again
To grow mesquite and huisache where food and fiber
Once flourished

Ice Fall
March second, warm and bright
A perfect day for a walk through the brush
Looking for snakes and arrowheads
‘Til the northwest turned black
So we headed back
Finding Granny wringing hands, admonishing
And whispering Mr. Matkin had died
While the black got closer and turned a funny green
To a swirling gray overrunning us
With a wall of white obscurity
That swept as a curtain southwest to northeast
Right at us huddled on the back porch in the tin-roofed
Granny-home holding its warm smells as the cold bore down on us
Swirling larger and larger rocks of ice around but mainly down
Bashing the metal crown above our heads turning from a
Din to a trap set then crashing our ears like a wild trampling of iron hoofs
As we screamed just to try to see if there was any other sound in the universe
Bouncing off the hard dirt and grass
Making pock holes in the fields
While it piled in drifts of knotty white balls
Passing after a week of minutes
Offering up a rainbow as apology
Along with lanes of white among the distant greening mesquites
On the ridges to the west
With us all grinning to each other that we had made it through that one

Twister
Baseball in our big front yard with
Two neighbor boys and us to make six for workup
Even though the three little boys couldn’t field so good yet
So when I got up to bat I looked out to the
Woods and hills west of the hundred-acre field next to the house
Where a cone of fury hung down from the green-gray scud
Throwing up trash from the brush on the ridges in the distance
I yelled and threw down the bat and when Mama and Daddy
Got out to the whipping wind on the north side of the house
They knew we all had to get away somewhere
And six sweaty kids and somewhat better smelling parents
Squeezed into the boat sized Ford to light out south
To get away
But the tornado snaked out and wound its tail back up
Making Daddy switch his concern to the
Grapefruit-sized chunks of ice that started falling
Pulling into the already mostly-filled metal tractor shed
That would have been a fine garage if it didn’t already
Have a tractor in it making Daddy leave the finned tail exposed
Much as Pooch’s tail stuck out from under the house
We supposed another twenty minutes of the traveling ice factory
Would have broken more than the
Fifty crushed shingles, the Ford’s and the dog’s tails
But the ripping monster settled into a slow rain and we
Made it to the house to the warm and dry
Sneaking out to the field to dig out a few of the biggest
Annular-ridged ice cannon balls into the freezer
Where they stayed five years ‘til we tired of hauling them out
For company

Cancer
Still dark while the dew was on the leaves
He hooked up the tractor to spray the poison
To kill the bugs that would kill our crop if left
But the arsenic crept into him too
Worming its chemical way to the nephritic filters
And lodging there for years
Inducing his life factory to grow new kinds of products
Products that cut like a crab
Cutting lifeblood loose to show in the toilet bowl
That the doctors say made it so they could find the insidious thing
And cut it out
But the cutting was a mess
One rumor held the surgeon looked at the aftermath
And told Mama he wouldn’t charge for the job
‘Cause he didn’t think
He would make it
He did
Forty years more with one kidney
And a big dent in the muscle in his back

Dirt Storm
Northers hit all the time down there
Like the one in Treasure of the Sierra Madre that blew all the gold dust away
But this time it was different
The fields were new plowed and the weeds hadn’t come up in the brushlands
So when the cold dry northwest blast hit there was nothing to stop it
From taking up what was there
Sand and soil
Moving tons from one side of the fields to the other
And tons more into the air to blow to the Gulf
Going on from one night through the next
Making room for no day in between
Without rest from the gritty invasion under the doors and windows
The family waited
Cleaning with futility staring out the north windows
Feeling no hope for the newly emerged green of crops
And suffering the loss of loan-shark borrowed cash
Along with any hope
As the wind howled and chugged its relentless life around theirs
Quieting finally the next morning
Leaving fence posts sunk in five feet of dirt
And six inch furrows reduced to slick planar slabs of earth
In a week daddy had scratched together enough good will in town
To plant again