Prayer For Rain

By the unhallowed skulls of our ancestor’s passion
we cry. Our tongues find fire in the air, we
drink of dust within our spittle, pained.

Down the clouds in torrents fall.
Spear the sky and make it roil with lost
Containment for our powerfully crowded grasping.

Oh Mother of the World, complete our sorrowful
lamentation’s need.

So soon we’re forgotten. Motes of no worth. Locust
stripped of all which stripping leaves us.
Fire of the belly creatures, not refined.
Crowding ourselves in need of what we do not lack.

Hear our sorrow with heal forgiveness.
These cold, misshapened dolls of clay whose
meanness stops the flow.
Cracked and favored by the dust, we cry out and
plead our hopeless case.

Wield the springs of winter’s passage.
Sooth our need with nurture wet.
Light the load of self-torn loathing.
Bring the rain which quells the heart.

~Stuart Andrew Marshall Tanner~

Dedicated to the farmers of Kansas.