WITHOUT THE RAIN

 

What if the rain stopped falling?

The skies would be bleak;

The rivers would run no more!

Parched land bowed before crimson shadows;

The heat waves in torrents cascading,

Bare the body and bones of the soul.

 

Green grass, withered, crumbles beneath winds,

Colourless, scorched pale, blown like leaves;

Where trees no longer provide a shaded canopy;

Dried branches, crisply crunch where they fall,

Nestled against bleached carcasses;

A hazy reflection of victims left alone.

 

Who will listen to the sounds of silence?

The critters' calls no longer echo;

The cattle's lowing has left the meadow;

The wild and the tame exposed to their fate,

Their pastureland once rich, now dried,

Open to terror; they were forced to vacate.

 

When shall we hear you, O sweet symphony?

Take flight O rustling wings;

To clothe the air in wonders of coloured brilliance,

With songs soft with trills, coos and cries;

Vexed with your disappearance, the rainbow lies,

Lost too; no part of a moistureless sky!

 

The salted seas, caked with briny scales,

Edge valleys and rifts of lunarscapes;

Shrunken shorelines hang in depths,

Beach heads barren hung with shoals,

Of fertilizing fish, undiluted, unabsorbed;

Waiting to be washed, a nurture to torrid soil.

 

Who will listen? What sounds are silence?

Unknown nature; What will exist?

Wind and air, only in vacuum,

No ripples on ponds, teeming with life,

Where beetle and fly feed on algae,

Consumed by their own inactivity.

 

No morning mists of frugal fogs;

The veils of silver grey to adorn,

The beauty of Mother Earth.

No longer the bride, whose cloak torn aside;

A spectacle viewed throughout the Universe,

Now lost, a barren waste, orbiting alone!

 

1994 © Will George.

Will George Poet

will-george-poet.co.uk