It Was So Dry in Midland
(West Texas)
by Larry Thomas

even grown trees died
if they weren't watered.
Sunday afternoons, after church,

the embers of hell still crackling
like mesquite in our rapid
little jackrabbit hearts,

we'd pack into the Buick,
picnic sacks in tow,
and head with Mom to Cole Park.

There, three or four miles
outside the city limits,
they dug deep wells

just to water the elms.
We could see their green for miles
rising from the flat horizon,

lining our waterless oasis,
incongruous with the desertscape
as whores standing in the baptistry.

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