I lie awake
a little past ten,
still praying for rain,
even while watching the lightning
as the storm creeps its way in
from the west.

I walked the pasture on Friday,
spraying the pokeberry bushes
and the infernal, eternally sprouting ailanthus.
As I moved from patch to patch,
my shoes crunched against the brown stubble,
bare earth showing
where the horses had eaten to the nib
every green thing that horses eat
unless they are starving.

Across the bottom,
up on the fields bordering the bluff,
corn waist high twisted in the heat,
while nearby, newly planted beans
waited for the cue of moisture
to send them surging toward sunlight.

Road banks and fields
showed the hues of August
two weeks before
the calendar’s starting of summer.

For an hour,
flashes bracket clouds,
gradually shifting from broad strobes
to stark etchings of white-hot static

and then I hear
the first thumping of hard drops of rain
coming against the panes beside the bed.

I drift off to sleep,
thinking of green pastures
and sure promises.

H. Arnett
6/11/12