In the houses of the people, the desert-dwellers, the ranchers, the toilers of the ancient ways,
the demonic March wind snarls and bullies its way through the day
and halfway through the still-chill night,
the newly waning moon staring down, as if in shock.
The land stirs from its winter stupor, stirs but does not fully awaken,
its breath shallow, the desert world waiting—
not for renewal, not for rain,
but for the weight of the sun’s hammer,
for the cruelty of what must come.
The wavering mesquite grips the ghostly dust with a trembling hand,
the buffelgrass licks at the wind, spreading like slow contagion,
while the cactus, as always, stands silent, hoarding what it can.
Even the dead things, brittle and forgotten,
scatter like whispers among the rocky soil,
their remnants shivering against the torturing wind,
surrendering, evaporating, becoming not even memory. Dust.
And the people,
the ones who have not fled, the ones who have nowhere to go,
hunker low against the scouring gusts,
wrapping themselves in silence, taking comfort in old wisdom,
in the gritted-teeth resolve of ancestors who knew
suffering could not be reasoned with,
and hard times could not be talked away.
Beyond the dust-smeared horizon, a voice uncoils from radios and screens,
serpentine and grinning, hissing that all is well,
swearing the sky is blue while the sun bleeds red on the western horizon,
that the ground is rich while it cracks and crumbles,
that the people thrive while they scrape and starve.
And still, the soulless wind rises.
It carries the stench of something scorched,
something taken too far, too long, too mercilessly.
It whistles through broken fences,
through the doorframes of houses long abandoned,
through the ribs of cattle gone skeletal beneath the pulsing, punishing glare of summers past.
It wails and gibbers through the small towns where men and women still labor,
where they pull what little they can from the desiccated earth
and brace themselves for another summer of woe.
The wind does not whisper comfort, nor does it lie—
it only scours, only erases, only drags old truths into dust.
It moves relentlessly, blindly,
dragging the dust,
dragging the weary days,
dragging the world toward the self-perpetuating furnace of emperor summer.
And the people?
Their mouths are shut.
Their fists are tight.
Their eyes, narrowed slits against the wailing, simpering, singing insanity of the omniscient wind. They do not blink.
They pull their hoods and hats low,
their shoulders tight,
and hunkered in this, the early dawning of summer’s savage suffering, this mocking, bullying spring wind, once again they wait.
For what, they do not dare anticipate.
But they are ready.
