Kevin Dyer

The crows in the cypress tree
cry openly.
Beneath, after feet
of soft earth the
well-digger comes up
against stone repeatedly
and the sounds
condense inside his brain.

He's tired of being
compared again to a certain type of weather
the kind that seeps in.
The sky in stricken whiteness
pale blue
like bones that bend in the wind.

This was it, they said
the source of water
easily had.
But oh, the rock.
It's funny, he thinks,
his ass is cold.
Though everyone outside already knows.

The crows in the trees
crunch mercilessly
on the crickets unhidden
in the leaves.

Down is the way to go.
This he knows.
There's an image of a man
in an open field, wheat-filled,
the sky half-lit.
By all appearances he's through with it.

Yet he's the only one to know
that any hole won't do. It has to be just
right. Then struck
an onslaught of water up to his knees.
A rising, dying in the trees.