Melody At Night

Melody At Night

A hot day in June.
Mercury, drastic prone.

Panting dogs.
Forlorn cows.
Listless birds
in wilted leaves.

Veins of earth
brown, bared.
Water holes
depleted, dry.

Sultry sullen silence
in the dusty, heated streets.

Speech is a strain.
Hearing, a hardship.
Thought unthinkable.
Deed left undone.

Evening news;
Heat wave killed
dozens,
across the states.

Nightfall.
The scorcher Sun
suspended
for a few hours.

People crept into beds,
under white nets
defense
against mosquitoes.

Late at night,
on sweat soggy
pillows,
with minds
humid hazy,

they  heard.
First, the sigh,
then smelt
the scent
of the rain
seeping,
spreading,
sumptuous.

Felt in the blood
and the bones
of the earth
and the earth-born,
waited, breathless.

The wind,
faint, then fierce,
a force, across
the eastern ranges,
the blue expanse.

Fissures of light
in the black clouds
like disco dancers
to the thunder drums
and the melody.

Drops of rain
one by one
caressed the ground.
Dry lives
bloomed at once.

The sound of rain
on the roof tops,
on the trees,
on the distant hills,
continued.

Succor
to the parched veins.

They listened,
earth, animal and man
to the song of rain,
to the melody at night,
a different delight
on and on, and on.