Dry as a Bone

Mona, channeling Irrelephant, summons the poetic troops with the Friday word of the week: rain.

my dad and I are drinking beer
watching the storm clouds tumbling like clowns
over the sangre de cristos

between us and the mountain peaks
shimmers a thin blue quilt of rain
falling halfway down the sky and disappearing
in wisps as fragile as ghosts
above the bone white valley floor

it's called virga, he tells me
when the rain does that
evaporating on the way down
it never reaches the field

I say, too hot for rain these days
dry as dust, he agrees

the last few swallows of beer are warm
the glass already dry to the touch
the hot wind blows in our faces
the distant thunder rolls