Drought
I.
The bean plants fall into the cracked clay
like the damned into some pit,
their dusty leaves writhing arm-like
in displays of supplication.
When the mud from the last rain dried
it buckled up in the middle of the street
like a small range of sharp mountains
stamped into craters by goats’ feet.
Drought clings to my hair and shirt
when I walk along the mountain road,
turns to thin mud when I stand under
the rusty pipe in Mercedes’ shower.
II.
The expectant sky breathes hard and shallow,
moist air from a straining bellows
shaking dry cornstalks.
When the drenching birth of rain finally comes,
we all run out to midwife the storm,
Bachanal dancing.
The rain feels like snow in the hot air,
stinging the skin with its cold,
steams when it strikes stone.
The dust mountains in the streets burst
and spill into rivers that wind through
the garbage in the roads,
save the burning bean stalks only to drown them,
and pull the hillsides down into valleys
to carry them into the sea.
My month in the Dominican Republic was the “rainy season”; every afternoon, so regularly you could set your watch by it, a downpour flooded the streets. All the kids in the village, and the gringo visitors, ran out to play in the rain and mud, while the adults made sure the rain barrels were positioned to collect water. The government controlled the water that came from pipes, and we could only be sure the faucets would work until about nine in the morning.
The region had been so badly deforested that the downpours were more a cause of erosion than replenishment; it was worse over the border in Haiti. Farms clinging to the steep hills were always in danger of washing away, and the mud turned back to dust by evening.
