Thursday, October 4, 2012

Who Will Start the Rain?



image borrowed from bing


Who Will Start the Rain?

Day after day, month after month,
our mouths parched,
we wait for the rain here
in the Northwest, which is so odd
for us living in the heart of dampness,
having to experience, to grabble with
drought.

We were forced to dig deep 
in our worn pocketbooks
to pay for precious city water 
to sprinkle lovingly
on our divers lawns, trying so hard
to restore a semblance of green
to our thirsty world.

Dead grass is just a naked affront
to our esthetics, a brown dagger
plunged into the sagging gut
of our tenuous connection
to Herself,

who has ignored the nurturing of our rain forests,
let ripening tomatoes struggle on their vines,
let noxious dust pile up on our window sills
and the new cover over our redwood deck

where I am no longer master and commander
while gulping morning Asian tea, and staring
at another gorgeous petulant sunrise
that brings higher heat index, smog,
and bristling brittleness to another
day of damned dryness. 

Hope limps in on turned pages of calendar,
as we relit the furnace last night,
turned back the A/C, welcoming October
who is arriving with open autumn arms
and gently herding the Indians out of summer,

touching a few leaves with its Fall paintbrushes,
and making earnest promises about future
precipitation that it had better keep
so that our lawn thatching & lime-spreading
will go well, and happy weeds will expire,
and natural sweetness will boil up from
invigorated soil to help restore the balance
of verdant bliss long missing, and embrace
the shell-shocked yards and our heavy hearts.

Glenn Buttkus

October 2012

Posted over on dVerse Poets MTB

Would you like to hear the author read this prose poem to you?

19 comments:

Unknown said...

I enjoyed the accusatory tone, how dare nature show up with petulant sunrises when you're enduring shell-shocked yards. I especially responded to your word play (Indian summer, etc.). A nice flip on the expected nature paean and sharp insight on it all going to serve suburban well-kept gardens that corset nature. In general I liked the tossing on our heads of expectation. Very nicely done!

Claudia said...

can feel the longing for change in this...the end of the drought..the yearning for mist soaked lawns...autumns arms..oh yeah..they're open wide and i just run into them like a child..smiles

Tashtoo said...

No doubt in my mind that this was a prompt that would be aced by your pen. Fantastic!

Anonymous said...

I can relate to the need for the weather change but I what I like the most is the way you express it! :)

Good stuff!

Brian Miller said...

ha...i got the rain, sorry....i feel the underlying frustration in this...how can one enjoy the beauty of sunrise if they are without water....and that opens the door to some philosophical questions as well...probably way off topic, but i enjoyed your piece sir and i hop you get some rain...

Rosemary Nissen-Wade said...

Nicely done! We are already too dry here, in Spring.

Jessica Lynn Lang said...

I think the emotion is the most prominent thing in this poem. The words really give birth to the frustration and the thirst.

Sue Judd said...

Excellent write, I like the depth of emotion in this.

Jenny Herner said...

There's so much in this! I especially liked "a brown dagger
plunged into the sagging gut"! Nice!

Sheila said...

I can relate - that photo looks like my yard; running the AC in October here, too. I particularly liked how you juxtaposed this with war. Enjoyed your reading as well.

Dana Dampier said...

Yep! That looks kind of like my yard. We did get some rain recently, but it wasn't enough.

phillip woodruff (jalopy dreams) said...

well, i'm not much of a gardener, but i love images you draw up... makes me wish i had a lawn now, and perhaps some rain too. enjoyed this very much

Sonika Uppal said...

sometimes pouting works...lol

i do hope u get some rain...

Dave King said...

I'm feeling guilty now. We'v e had far more than our share of rain. There should be more than enough to go round! Top write, though. Something of the angst that lies behind the grouse came through loud and clear.

Maude Lynn said...

Nicely done!

Beachanny said...

The drought sears. The poem sizzles. It begins prosaically and posits the position before moving to the pivot, where the earth turns, the weather cools, the colors change, and hope springs in pure poetry. Very effective!

Anonymous said...

You've got lawn

Grow food from it

That's what the green earth is for

Anonymous said...

very powerful.

if this one won't help bring the rains, what will?!

Sabio Lantz said...

"to grabble" !
Sometimes I have check to see if this is yet another word I don't know or just poetic play and then the urban dictionary makes me laugh.

Great read -- lawns are so bizarre. The grass-culture deserves to be bit ! ;-)

[write-if-you'd-like!]