Living Out the Drought

One sickens of the same unblemished sky,
sadist sun, unsummoned stale mirage.
While the desert advances inch by inch each year,
skin draws taut as drumheads,
skulls ring with light.
                       Dust reigns.
The hot-tongued wind licks itself to sleep. Night
rolls the bleached bone moon around its rim.
Night, of undrinkable inks; Day,
intolerable anticipation of torrents
quelling sandstorms in the blood.

Robert Fox