Creative Writing: Parchment

Hello!

It's been over 3 months since I've written anything of my own, but tonight it just felt possible. I went over to one of my favorite Magnetic Poetry sites for inspiration, and these words got me started -- cloud, strike, crash, tingling, waiting, happen -- even though I only used a few of them.

Here is the result, not quite perfected, fresh off the press as it were:

Parchment

by Nancy Rae Kienzler

It was our longest, our greatest, our finest drought,
The time we dried like raisins, like sawdust, like parchment.
Experienced as we were, knowing it would end,
As droughts always do, we waited patient and still.

And yet, nerves tingled. Senses heightened.
Do you smell electricity? Are those cirrus or cumulous?
Are the leaves up? Are the cows lying down?
Even the animals were restless then, pacing and sighing.

One night we heard the crackle across the bone-dry hills.
We sat on the porch and looked Southward,
Then wrapped around the side to look Westward.
It was beautiful, and so brilliant, but no more. Not a drop.

I don’t remember the fall or feel of that first raindrop,
Nor the first storm, momentous as it must have been.
But the weeks, and the weeks, of watching and wanting,
Waiting and withering – I hold on to those.