I wrote this poem after witnessing the drought in my friends' fields in Argentina. Click HERE for more information on the drought.
"Drought" has been published in Able Muse Journal, Able Muse Anthology, Passages, and Poetry Storehouse. It is included in my first book, Lines of Flight.
Above our field of stunted corn and thistle,
a lone chimango circles, scouts, homes in
as sure and swift and savage as a missile,
pins down a leveret, rips away its skin,
ignores the terror-stricken eyes, the squeal,
devours the pulsing heart. His thirst now slaked,
he leaves the rest for a carancho’s meal.
The land is quivering, crumbling, cracked and caked,
the stream a silent checkerboard of mud,
the well near dry. I pray this lack of water
won’t leave me stony at the sight of blood,
of rational, inexorable slaughter.
(Pueblitos, Argentina - near the town of Saladillo, 2009)
Note: the chimango is a common raptor in southern South America; the carancho is a carrion-eating bird, also native to that region.
A chimango
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