Winners and Losers
A drought comes
on little cat feet.
It sits looking
over farm and valley
on silent haunches
and plans to stay.
The exceptionally wet early spring that followed the exceptionally cold winter that followed the catastrophic fall drought had left this farmer, this land, these animals more than a bit whiplashed and uncharitable.
In mid-spring, when things were merely dry, there was revelry in the freedom from mowing our lawn and the lack of need to weed-eat around vines and bushes. Shed of the relentless mire, the sheep cavorted around the pastures with excitement. Foxes that had been preying on our hens were not so gleeful. Having lost their covering grasses as they slinked from the woods to the dinner table, they felt twin shotgun blasts from a double barrel to be insults hurled. With their camouflage removed they had expected understanding and sympathy from the farmer. I felt neither.
The dry spell continued with a few spots of rain every four or five days, enough to settle the dust. But when the temps stayed in the nineties, like an oven on low, sucking the moisture out of the ground, those few spots of rain ultimately mattered not.
Last week the dryness moved into moderate drought. With the long-range forecast of continued extreme heat and only the smallest chance of rain, we have shifted into protection mode. We are busy selling lambs early, buying extra hay while there is some to buy and prices are normal, and frequently watering newer plantings whose roots do not yet run deep. We do what we can and watch the skies, make bargains with our darker natures.
It's a roll of the dice: whether Beryl the Hurricane will shift and bring us soaking rains or (and this looks more likely) head up the Mississippi Valley and relieve the drought conditions of the Midwestern states.
Funny how coastal devastation can bring salvation to someone inland. Winners and losers, the soul gets battered in the choosing. Should prayers be offered for wrack and ruin?
Like the parishioners in Twain’s “War Prayer,” when Christ explained that their prayers for victory meant the loss of sons and destruction of farms, towns, and cities of their enemies, this farmer would consider a lunatic the man who suggested passing up a little debris in Texas for an inch or two of rain in Tennessee.
(With apologies to Carl Sandburg)