Surveying This Picturesque Landscape in Summer

Another year with no monsoon?

Drought continues on the mesas.

The heat settled in months ago,

And seems set to stay for the fall.

Ocho meses de infierno,

Quatro de invierno—reverse

Of what the Spanish soldiers found

In this land in 1601,

In the most recent mega-drought,

A cold one, the Little Ice Age.

Armored and desperate locusts,

They stripped the freezing Pueblos bare.

That was something new and different

For all of the people involved,

A perfect horror to survive.

So what’s new and different this time?

The ways Earth changes are rarely

Entirely for better or worse.

Earth loves an equilibrium,

The reason life lives here at all,

And it has this gift, call it sick

Or creative, for which humans,

Its children, have a knack as well,

Of making the beautiful cruel,

The cruel a fuel for fresh beauty,

Whatever this year’s ratio

Of winter to hell. We, at least,

Can sometimes smell guilt. Extra hell.