Out on my country road, grasshoppers cannibalize their unlucky cousins where they lie in grisly pose after being struck or run over by cars and trucks grinding on through veils of dust.
T.S. Eliot was mistaken when he
wrote: “April is the cruellest month.”
In my northland, August is the
cruelest month. In August, the sun bleaches
all green from the grassy opens and the blank sky forgets how to produce rain.
We can forgive T.S. Eliot, of
course, because he is a poet. Poets
drink too much gin and overthink everything.
Out here, we spend much of our August
waiting for smoke from both distant and nearby wildfires to fill our valley. We, and our landscape, are largely shaped by
summer fires.
But give me ten minutes of rain
and the scent of sagebrush and the scent of damp earth. Give me that.
And I will forgive August for the driest transgressions.
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