Self-Portrait as the Prophet Isaiah, Yearning

by Jennifer Bullis

August, and the earth so dry,
             the grass gives up its sugar
                          to sweeten the bitter-hot air.

I watch a thin hawk drift low over the fields,
             looking for anything
                          the grass has not already yielded.

Each afternoon, vast clouds herd themselves
             across the sky, a water
                          dividing dryness from dryness,

as if to portend quenching
             of the parched place below,
                          but still delivering nothing.

Every day when clouds’ dark bellies cover the sun
             locusts begin again their long screeching
                          at the apparent approach of night. 

All the earth, sick with hope,
             starts over in its groaning and its thirst,
                          unslaked by the promise of what looms.

::

Jennifer Bullis is the author of Impossible Lessons (MoonPath Press) and of poems and essays appearing in Cave Wall, Gulf Coast, Indiana Review, RHINO Poetry, Terrain.org, and Water~Stone Review. She is an Artsmith Residency Fellow, recipient of honorable mention for the Gulf Coast Prize, and finalist for the Brittingham & Felix Pollak Prize and Moon City Poetry Award. She holds a PhD in English from University of California-Davis and lives in Bellingham, Washington, where she writes about long-distance foot travel, horse-keeping, motherhood, deforestation, and women in the courtroom.

Image: Micha Sager

ID: a field of dry, brown flowers and grass before a light blue sky.