After Drought, Flood

We'd longed for such release
in days of heat, in days that sun
bore down upon fields of wheat
and farmers cut cactus pads

for the tired cows to drink from,
in days when red-tailed hawks
made lazy passes in the sky above,
whose enduring blue caused our eyes

to ache like clouds which came in
afternoons but never gave of water,
in days of nights we could not sleep
because the wind withheld herself

from us, nights we could not even touch
each other. Not all disaster ends
in relief. When rains returned
and drained the hills and canyons,

waters rolled down to fill the creek and
spill onto the lower field, then
abandoned us, raving, like an angry lover.
We picked through the wrack

in the aftermath, grasses caught in thorns
of mesquite and barbed wire,
found a catfish, bones like filigree
arced into rising lash, caught in earth's

depression as the flood receded,
not knowing the water
he needed there like breath,
like I need you, would leave him.

Copyright © 2002, 2003 Kimberly Meyer All rights reserved
from Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission