Gentle Rain

For these year past the well is dry for drought eats up the land; the tender grass, the fertile field are toughened clods and sand. Still, my tired thirsting heart returns, week after bitter week, to sink a cup between stale stones that once were wet and sweet. Can soil this long without the rain grow green beneath a storm? can seed so burnt by scorching suns be savagely reborn? This dry earth needs a gentle rain to coax the seed to swell; a ceaseless. thirst assuaging rain to reach my starving well. © 1987, Faye Lanham Gibson