this is how it will be
sand hills sandhills wind
silica sharp abrading skin like a cheese grater
wind sand wind
scarf ends whipping face covered clothes anchored to the body with one clenched
hand
this is how it will be
keeping a tomato plant alive
with dregs from a thousand drinks of tea
at every sunrise and every sunset cup by cup
plant by plant
a feral cat drinks only blood
nests in the heights of a dead tree eyrie
feasts on parrots, denudes the desert
lizard by lizard
no use for words like
lush verdant soaking
no longer in common usage luxuriant fecund fertile rich
flood rain floodplain (no use unless qualified as catastrophic)
bees
frogs
blue blues all the blues
by mutual consent red river gums relinquish life, and, in one suicide pact, die
river beds shrivelling with rustling, rasping dead cicada wings
broken steamers stranded high on the banks like failed Arks
wait for the 100-year flood, every ten years
camels wander the streets dreaming of water
in the bottom of the swales remembrance of green
delicacy of grey whispering grasses stone by stone abrading
sand dunes rising higher
sea dragged higher by every rising moon
desert moving east on each rising wind
scarcity causing not only words to fail
this is how it will be
