Out of the Dust: Spring 1935

The hard part is in spite of everything
if I had any boy court me,
it’d be Mad Dog Craddock.
But Mad Dog can have any girl.
Why would he want me?

The dust blew,
they say,
so you’d think it would have smothered the fire out,
but the flames,
crazy in the wind,
licked away at the wooden frames of the three box
cars,
until nothing remained but warped metal,
and twisted rails,
scorched dirt, and
charred ties.

The dust blew,
they say,
so you’d think it would have smothered the fire out,
but the flames,
crazy in the wind,
licked away at the wooden frames of the three box
cars,
until nothing remained but warped metal,
and twisted rails,
scorched dirt, and
charred ties.

And so they go,
fleeing the blowing dust,
fleeing the fields of brown-tipped wheat
barely ankle high,
and sparse as the hair on a dog’s belly.

We’ll be back when it rains,
they say,
setting out with their bedsprings and mattresses,
their cookstoves and dishes,
their kitchen tables,
and their milk goats
tied to their running boards
in rickety cages,
setting out for
California

But we ended up going anyway,
driving down the road in a procession to Texhoma.

I was sulking in the truck beside my father
when
heaven’s shadow crept across the plains,
a black cloud,
big and silent as Montana,
boiling on the horizon and
barreling toward us.

I was sulking in the truck beside my father
when
heaven’s shadow crept across the plains,
a black cloud,
big and silent as Montana,
boiling on the horizon and
barreling toward us.

More birds tumbled from the sky
frantically keeping ahead of the dust.

One family came in
clutched together,
their pa, divining the path
with a long wooden rod.

If it hadn’t been for the company,
this storm would have broken us
completely,
broken us more thoroughly than
the plow had broken the Oklahoma sod,
more thoroughly than my burns
had broken the ease of my hands.

But for the sake of the crowd,
and the hospitality of the home that sheltered us,
we held on
and waited

And because the rain came
so patient and slow at first,
and built up strength as the earth
remembered how to yield,
instead of washing off,
the water slid in,
into the dying ground
and softened its stubborn pride,
and eased it back toward life.

I sat at her piano a long time after I
got back from the church,
imagining
a song for my little brother,
buried in Ma’s arms on a knoll overlooking the
banks of the Beaver

A chill shoots up my spine
imagining a dinosaur
slogging out of an Oklahoma sea,
with turtles swimming around its legs.