Drought

Drought

The tramping feet of skinny cattle

Herded along the track

Raise dust billows

Between brown and empty fields

Where the earth, dried and caked

Cracked and baked

Solid in its crustiness

Lies parched beneath a searing sun

Burned and beaten crops

Lie defeated by the dryness

Their wispy roots withered

Lifeless, straw-like stretchings

Down between the cracks of powdered soil

Exhausted by the struggle to survive

Shrivelled and stunted

In the cratered furrows

Liquid long receded, unreachable

Deep beneath the surface

Leaving not a thing alive

The landscape sterile

Condemned to a gasping, choking death

In the over-heated breeze

Fierce and rain-barren

The glaring, cloudless sky

Curses and punishes the land

Withholds its water from the needy

The ground cries out for moisture

Any drop to slake and quench its thirst

Its desiccated loamy texture

Dirt-crumbled in the empty air

Powdered into shifting dust

Drifting slowly into piles

Driven by an arid wind

Which whispers as it blows

Copyright Andy Fawthrop 2015