The clouds have piled up to the west once again,
Grave and solemn as ancient, inscrutable judges
As they roll off the lake out toward Buffalo,
Odd ciphering of dots and dashes
Camouflaged in the heat lightning,
The key to its code beyond our ken
(Though we suspect the message is straightforward enough:
No rain for your beans and sorghum tonight.)
We are steadfast in our belief that rain will come,
Indeed, that it must come, if for no more reason
Than our fathers believed it would come,
And their fathers before them as well,
No matter that it was a simpler time then,
And confidence and conviction simpler as well:
No maze of subsidy and acronym to navigate,
No peppers from Argentina, no corn from DuPont.

We have seen the grain markets roller-coaster and ricochet,
The price per hundredweight of milk crash in a manner
Which sent our citified ancestors strolling off window ledges,
And yet we continue (aided and abetted by the bank,
The co-op, the seed company, each of whom also knows
Exactly what the denouement entails)
The inexorable cycle of madness:
Plow, plant, harvest, then winters of regret
Until it is time to plow and plant again,
Each year the liquid manure smelling a bit more acrid,
Like there was some Gomorrah smoldering under the surface,
Its inhabitants blind, soulless, cackling at us
With something that may as well be malice.

How to carry on, then?
Surely we could not be blamed
If we rent our garments and rolled madly in the dust,
Cursing God or jabbering in tongues,
But that is not our way, has never been our way,
And so we face one more cold snap that takes the tottering lambs,
One more inconvenient frost which threatens the apples and grapes,
With antique stoicism and grimly set jaws
As we stare at one more darkening sky,
The thunder in the distance
All but issuing a mocking challenge to our fidelity,
In wait for some moisture, some meteorological baptism
That is far from certain to come.
It’s what leads us to faith,
So those who reside in the pulpits tell us,
Ascetic men who tip-toe through the barnyards and pastures
As though the cowflops were landmines,
But we could tell them that faith is no blank check
Which awaits us at the end of days,
But rather the grim and desperate struggle
To force our gods and demons into a box
And somehow secure the lid
As we simply try to ride it all down just one more ******* day.