Parched

That dry whisper of landscape,

where parched lips of crackling dirt

purse upward to taste the tender kiss

of water drops.

The slender arms of starved branches,

whose spindling stick fingers stretch

to sparse clouds.

A scene of stale citrus orange, speckled

with grains of sand like sepia film reels

relentlessly skipping.

Rainbows are for the pools of gasoline

that dwell on crumbling ash-fault slabs,

not for dusty, shrivelled skylines,

and not for you.