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When the world is hot and my skin is fried,
scratching from the constant dry, let the clouds boil up, boil up
high. And then shade the earth with the darkening sky and bring the
secrets and the smell of rain. The coolness and the blessed rain,
again.
Our land is brown but blessed, stressed in the heat, the shiny heat
of day. The slender green of rivers slide along, striving to
continue, to feed its own along the banks, the banks where the dust
rises. Rises, powdery clomp by clomp as we walk, walk the shady way.
And though the heat, the dryness of heat, pushes down our weary
feet, we plod along. Ours is the blessing of challenge, to live, to
thrive in the heat. To toil and sweat, to make the cold drink at
day’s end that much sweeter. Sweeter as it goes down, cooler as it
falls, dropping the coolness inside us and forcing us to smile. That
summer smile.
When the heat falls hard, on many days, unquenched by the dark of
night, we ask, in quiet times, we ask. Bring us the clouds, the
black-bellied clouds, the clouds that softly hold the heads of gods
in their moistening grasp. The clouds, those big-bellied busters
that hold the violence, the wind, the flashes, the noise. The clouds
we wait for and pray for and look for on the western ridge. Let them
come, with their silver tops and their bellies black as night and
cool as forgiveness. The summer clouds, the clouds that define our
culture, our art, our summer, our hot, heavy summer.
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A rain, a storm, a suddenness of
life and blast and sweet charity designed to keep us living here,
here in the rain, here in the sun, and keep us praying, here in the
rain, and looking toward the west for more, always to the west,
always looking for more.
[Text from file received from
Slim Randles]
Brought to you by the
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