Оахаса

Beneath the carving drag of wood
The land moves slowly.
But lightning comes.

Growing their secret in brown earth
Spread like a woman
Daring
Is weary work for still-eyed men
Who break the earth, nurse their seed,
And a hard watching through the dry season.
Yet, at the edge of bright, thin day—
Past the split plow—they look
To the hills—to the brewing thunder
For the storm is known.

The land moves slowly.
Though the thunder’s eye
Can crack with a flash
The glass-brittle crust of a mountain’s face,
The land moves slowly.
All a man’s strength and in his son’s arms
To carve one sleeve into rock-defiant earth
And the spread land waits.

Slow, long, the plowing
Through dry-season brown,
And the land moves slowly.

But lightning comes.