Even A Short Drought Lasts Too Long

by Lucy Griffith

Photography by Nicole Moore

~For Clegg Fowlkes

I’ve studied water― riveted by rain, stalked each drainage,

found ways to capture every drop, waste not. Fifty gallons

of dew some mornings, run off each roof to a cistern. Berms

below each bluff point to a pond. On the windmills, each year

I grease the bearings, the leathers when they crack, change the

10-weight oil in the gears. I plug every leak, route wash-water

to my garden. Still, drought’s a bastard. Ribcages of catfish sneer

at me from the crazed clay of each dry tank. One day I ask

the boss what she did those seven years it never rained in the 50’s.

We didn’t owe the bank, so we butchered and froze two cows,

sold the rest. Sold all but one good horse. Kept one milk goat.

Then― we waited.