Artificial Rain

I admit I thought of you as my very own upland meadow,
that those before hadn’t cultivated you because they had not love,
that I could be the friend and tool God used to give you year-round color
that you’d be willing to be hardpan plowed if only I were yet more tender.

The weight of my watering-can almost separated the muscles from my bones,
but the ringing gale-sound slung ‘round hot-dipped steel tickled my ears for the climb.
I caught myself perplexed as I poured out and poured out on vines always sickly,
fettered like a lactating doe with her ravenous fawn whenever you choose to push me.

Your depressed guts confessed through your mouth when we were out on midnight walks
the very reason you’d seek to head-long spill me out before the summer months.
If you hid like Elijah, you’d quickly tire of mere meat-morsels and bread,
and you’d reach out and catch and cook your God-tamed ravens instead.

I sting as if by briars and praise for arrogance sapped away by force and by knowing
that only He can make mulberry roots savor sands and shoring saltwaters,
that only He can clasp and transplant vast and unsounded aquifers,
that only He can rewind these sinful weeds of ours back to native flowers.