DROUGHT AND REPRIEVE (new form) *****please see author notes

Too little rain for way too long,
ground so dry that it's just wrong.
Crops of dead from moisture's dearth.
What led to this drought's arid birth?

I've never seen it near this dry,
all the clouds have just passed by.
What used to be broad roiling rivers
reduced to narrow water slivers.

Cattle gone 'cause pasture's dead.
There's naught to raise up in their stead.
Many brooks are now bone dry,
trees now wilt prepared to die.

Near reservoir now just a puddle
where fish,frogs and turtles huddle.
I wonder just what they might think
of being driven to their brink.

Everywhere I chance to peer
desiccated, dust , dry and sere.
for six years.
A reprieve?

Forecast for tropical storm
anxious tension building
...as approach grows more certain

Clouds approach
arrive
thicken
darken

A warm damp breeze
bearing the first tiny drops
......of rain

Slowly increasing in volume
becoming torrents
Earth and all rejoice in the return of mud
ground sucking down water
like beer at a frat party

First trickles in dry stream beds
becoming heavier
muddier
as now normal flow become
long awaited flood

The drought breaker

Three blessed days duration
liquid life standing in fields

The gradual tapering off
as spent storm moves on
revealing:
...miraculous tiny green sprouts
....full lakes and water ways
.....invigorated foliage
.....amphibians' emergence
and the return of
Hope