Drought

Deer raise their ears, as he steps on gravel, then lower their heads
and browse on grass, as he moves beyond them toward the street.
He does not know why the catalpa tree is the first to shed leaves,
the last to leaf, but when he stops to gaze up at the bare branches,
the sky’s a surface of a pond starting to freeze. He has tried and
failed, tried and failed all summer; now the garden’s overgrown
with weeds; another apricot twig snaps when bent; after a rat
burrowed into the outdoor sofa, he had it hauled to the dump. In
the dark, a gleaming flatbed truck transports large cylinders of
waste down a mesa, along city limits, to an underground salt bed.
At 3 am, while he sleeps, “Holy shit!” erupts out a doorway;
flames rise in an apartment complex, and alarms sound.

Reddening pear leaves—
opening spigots, he drains
the last drops from tanks—