After reading The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl by Timothy Egan.
We held the worms and mites in soil and faithfulness for you
Our roots stroking them
Contented in the deep good earth ten thousand years
Intimate with both soil and sky
Not remote from heaven
And you—you even dwelt in the soil with us
But then you raised up houses
Where you would sweep, swab, and wash your dust-clogged clothes
We still clung to the earth
Even when its people and its buffalo were taken from it
Not prosperity, no, it was your reversion to poverty
That slaughtered our final expanses
That made our ruin, and yours
In terrible rows we fell
Before your mechanized zealotry
Was your reaper so loud,
Your scythe so efficient
That you did not hear the earth’s death rattle?
But soon
You could not breathe either
Andy Oram
February 13, 2024