Drought
Tramping feet of skinny cattle
Track-herded, raising dust billows
Between brown, empty fields
The earth, dried and caked
Cracked and baked
Crusted solids parched beneath a searing sun
The glaring, cloudless sky
Fierce and rain-barren
Curses and punishes the land
Withholds its water from the needy
Liquid long receded, unreachable
Deep beneath the surface
Leaving not a thing alive in the sterile landscape
Condemned to a gasping, choking death
In the over-heated breeze
Burned, beaten crops defeated by the dryness
Lie strangled, wispy roots withered
Lifeless, straw-like stretchings
Fingering down between cracks of powdered soil
Exhausted by the struggle to survive
Shrivelled and stunted in the cratered furrows
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 into piles
Driven by an arid wind, which whispers as it blows
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