Summer Paradoxes

Danita Dodson

Kneeling on dry grass in the extreme heat,
praying for rain, crying for the healing
of my scorched yard and my lifeless garden,
watching the clouds above the blue ridge, 
where trees have died these past few years,
forest loss changing the nebulous shapes
that roll like mobile mountains in a race,
speaking dreams and dangers for our earth.

Then the floodgates suddenly open wide,
the trusting arid ground drinking thirstily,
without rain for these many long weeks.
But it can’t swallow all, its belly gorged
with the falling sheets of endless water—
a weird weather bomb tailing a drought,
a strange cycle looping over and over
this summer like a bad horror movie.

Soon the creeks overflow their banks,
and the desiccated river is overtaken 
by the fluxes that engulf the wildflowers
stranded on the banks, hiding them forever
from sun, burying them again in earth—
burying much more in Eastern Kentucky,
making me wish I hadn’t prayed for rain,
bringing me to my knees again in the mud.