Perhaps if birds
Could bring the rain
We would seed our yards,
Learn their calls
Keep the cats inside.

/beckon to them with fields of sunflowers
/covet their myriad congregation along electrified wires
Build their houses
Guard their nests
Stay all our empty words

For a mated call to water

My children play
Duck, duck, goose
With rich adjectival muster-
medium-sized duck, superhero duck
Yell Goose! and always be prepared to run

Anthropomorphize these missing storms
See sparrows in each laden cloud

Sow the fields with barley
Surely they will love barley
And swoop down toward us
“with healing in his wings”

All our science is naught
Fruitless and pendant
Cotton in the mouth
We cry
medium-sized rain, superhero rain,

Or no rain at all
Because we have forgotten…

He said fire the next time