The earth around like hardened clay,

Slabs of sun-baked flatness,

Cracked with fissure lines of age

all wrinkled up in heat.

Nothing grows in desert air

nothing young, or green or fair.

–

The floods once came and surged the flats

you should have seen the waters—

bearing all in whackish rush

soaking in the ground.

And briefly then in desert glare

grass was green, and rich, and there.

–

So soon the gracious floods subside

and waiting in the oven

of inner-soil’s boiling core

the crack and dry spreads outward.

Now every drop of water’s spare,

no sprig of green to note, or stare.

–

No water’s run for eons now

the earth in hardened crackness.

Will nothing here survive to see a—

See! A spring is coming!

A sprig of leafy green-ness dare

that sprouts to life in desert bare.

–

–

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Photo by Abdulrahman Alsenaidi on Unsplash