Dry Spell Poem by Danny Draper

Wounds gape in the rueful earth
Seeds of qualm succumb to fear.
Current crops' resilience wanes
Cracks open tearing deep, deep down
Beyond the fragile pumped up surface
Past horizons of uneasy ancestral bones
Imperfect, strong but true,
To fragmented roots of primeval forests,
Beneath whose gnarled and protective boughs
Dreams sprouted and so oft' a brilliant yield
Projected, feeding hearty minds
Nourishing and illuminating to distant fields.
Now with its wisdom the forest has gone
Natural resources dwindle
Wealth has made us poorer yet
Dreams can't escape the spindle,
Seeking now by yesterday
Against the future we borrow
Modify crops, sewing spin and swindle.
Reap new enemies on the morrow,
Treaties to prosecute foe defeated at war
No longer have Geneva currency
From only two generations ago.
Empire seizes resources at will
Invisible are its ignorant and poor as
Wretches gormandise needily on admiration and sway
The rights of the individual assured with impunity
Elevate each to demigod, way above the state,
Credit gorge purchases, offered up to growth
Fleeting empowered fix to elusive purpose.
But without blissful feedlot consumption
The state would soon abate,
So with a holy book in one hand
And a smoking gun in the other,
They and the almighty stride
As bands and sols divide
Sacred fabric unravels
Threads unwind in a free falling spiral
Until each tatter of fibre is dispersed,
Inheritance of the jolly quest, moribund,
Ephemeral seeds but remain,
Near the barren wellspring
Where they discarded fell,
No end in sight; long dry spell.