<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div dir="auto" style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div class="">Dust in the Wind </div><div class=""> Recalled During Times of Covid 19 </div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><span style="font-size: 14px;" class=""><i class="">(with gratitude to Ken Burns)</i></span></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">To Amarillo came the initial</div><div class="">two-mile-high wave of dust</div><div class="">choking first the roosters</div><div class="">followed by the hens,</div><div class="">cows, swine, and humans.</div><div class="">Then it buried Oklahoma,</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Its no-man’s-land above Texas’</div><div class="">panhandle suffocating shriveling.</div><div class="">Where were the rain clouds in ’32?</div><div class="">nothing whatsoever grew</div><div class="">“what didn’t grow we tried harder</div><div class="">to grow, no crop new, just more.” </div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">(collapsing demand for so much</div><div class="">too-abundant over-fertile crop</div><div class="">blonde and auburn very sexy)</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">First, radios electric haywired,</div><div class="">you couldn’t shake hands at all</div><div class="">just before the dusters came</div><div class="">and all the little kids were freed</div><div class="">from school same as in the North</div><div class="">during the big snow storms up there.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Here on the plains just dust after</div><div class="">the buffalo grass was plowed under,</div><div class="">the water dried up, and the rain</div><div class="">stopped coming where there’d been </div><div class="">boom times of high golden wheat, </div><div class="">great big homes with telephones!</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span></div><div class="">(collapsing demand for so much</div><div class="">too-abundant over-fertile crop</div><div class="">blonde and auburn very sexy)</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Wheat went down to seventeen cent,</div><div class="">and “we seen droughts before, and</div><div class="">things’ll get better next year,” and</div><div class="">Roosevelt preached loudly “no fear”</div><div class="">while this ram of dust charged and</div><div class="">charged again and more than once again.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">You were breathing in the black</div><div class="">blizzards, but, in between storms,</div><div class="">it couldn’t be more blue and beautiful,</div><div class="">the irony surrounding destructive force,</div><div class="">for the land had been swept clean of</div><div class="">its topsoil and an explosion of jackrabbits</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">(blonde and auburn very sexy)</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Jackrabbits everywhere like lost soil moving,</div><div class="">and the screaming of rabbit, the jackrabbits</div><div class="">being clubbed by men, women and kids screaming.</div><div class="">Rabbits were replaced by ton on ton</div><div class="">upon ton of strangling black dust, </div><div class="">a third of the land was blowing.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Most of the starving cattle shot,</div><div class="">humans dispossessed and foreclosed.</div><div class="">Suicides landed like buzzards on families</div><div class="">until the Black Blizzard of 1934</div><div class="">rendered suicide mostly irrelevant.</div><div class="">Black so black “black’s” very essence.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Even fearless FDR feared</div><div class="">a new man-made sahara</div><div class="">no longer the good earth</div><div class="">this desert produced nomads</div><div class="">seekers after light and fruit.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">(collapsed demand for so much</div><div class="">too-abundant over-fertile crop</div><div class="">blonde and auburn very sexy) </div><div class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Black Sunday 1935 portended</div><div class="">further years of drought and of</div><div class="">depression, depression and</div><div class="">drought little doubt they would remain</div><div class="">as with the rain which never left </div><div class="">the clouds, they vowed not to leave</div><div class="">their homes, such as they were, only</div><div class="">movement here being four million </div><div class="">acres shifting, sliding, blowing.</div><div class="">Little girls in flour sack without</div><div class="">a piece of bread, daddy’s too proud</div><div class="">to take charity or seek a loan.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">California no dust and the sun</div><div class="">no black wind or dust pneumonia.</div><div class="">3 out of 4 stoically remain behind</div><div class="">leave others to the migration,</div><div class="">defeat and shame carrying dust</div><div class="">by the lungful into Needles,</div><div class="">San Berdoo, Oakland, Merced,</div><div class="">picking oranges, prunes, grapes</div><div class="">when they could and all the while</div><div class="">hacking up remnants of the plains.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">I’d thought they all had left,</div><div class="">that Oklahoma was no more,</div><div class="">Arkansas a wasteland,</div><div class="">the Panhandle holding nothing,</div><div class="">that California held all surviving.</div><div class="">But Roosevelt made Democrats of</div><div class="">the plains while the dispossessed</div><div class="">in California became the Okies, and</div><div class="">“Okie go back, we don’t want you!”</div><div class="">the sign of those California times.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Back home, 1937 in the Dust Bowl,</div><div class="">the worst followed a snow storm,</div><div class="">dust increasing four days straight,</div><div class="">tidal waves of dust devouring towns.</div><div class="">What is worse, the dirt or the water?</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span></div><div class="">Then government paid farmers</div><div class="">not to grow their crops,</div><div class="">erosion cut in half, but</div><div class="">the rains came and so did</div><div class="">the grasshoppers like a moving earth.</div><div class="">more rain and the snow,</div><div class="">better farming, less erosion,</div><div class="">and sunflowers lit the land again.</div><div class="">and the wheat outgrew the children,</div><div class="">what rain! what good rain!</div><div class="">what good nourishing rain!</div><div class="">what a wonderful wheat crop!</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">(blonde and auburn very sexy)</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">The speculators returned;</div><div class="">they planted malignant seeds</div><div class="">for later dust storms carrying</div><div class="">once again in ‘51 the lesson, </div><div class="">“Listen to the land and not to us!”</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>- Ed Coletti</div><div class=""><br class=""></div></div></body></html>