Drought Weather

The old women stir in the sun-drenched kitchen
and the sandy dry riverbed
crackles with the grain
of old bones.

The men wrinkle slowly on the porch,
turning brown,
like the glass bottles
that slowly become the day’s dead soldiers.
A hawk floats over.

The women speak a little,
but their hands rest, still
a triumph like growing grass.
The men say nothing
as the sun slides down into the driest piece of sky.
It is blissful red,
red as blood,
red as the blood that leaps in them.
One whispers with a voice
like an engine turning over.
The others nod for nothing in particular.
Overhead the hawk still floats,
but he will not dive here.
His fierce eyes see only the ruins
of a once-ripe beauty.
The sun suspended,
for that moment the horizon
is old, used, and empty as the clinking bottles.

But still
the hawk soars
looking for home.