When The Wind Blows From the West

When the Wind Blows in From the West

The wind blowing from the west brings clouds that
herald yet another storm.
When lightning strikes the great expanse
of sand and rock and grit and dust,
we feel the shock that it must bring to Earth's bare bones.
When thunder rumbles across the desert sky,
reverberating from mesa top to mesa,
it disturbs the ghosts of those who lay in shallow, desert graves.
It echoes through the darkened windows of long deserted ruins—
those empty dwellings built high upon the cliffs.
Then, the rain in cloudburst falls
creating tiny craters in the heated, stony sand.
The desert drinks, but it's too much, all at once,
and so the muddy waters gather and race to shallow accepting basins,
only there to overflow, displacing those who dare to live in this unforgiving place.
Lightning dances in the distance—
spears of jagged fury from the sky
meeting Earth's upward charge,
visible for milliseconds,
enough to frighten, to cause us to fall on bended knee
and ask the Thunder God to spare our miserable hides.

Now, as quickly as it came, it's gone, heading east and north
to worry other humans in its path—
to nourish other earthly plots with phosphorenic energy.
All is calm now in the west—the air is cleansed—the sky is clear—until, once again, the wind blows from the west, and the clouds
like charging armies, herald yet another desert storm.

Vi Jones
©May 14, 2006