It is Hot Here

In recent days I posted on Facebook the news that I had placed first in an international writing competition sponsored by a cultural group in Spello, Italy.  It was, of course, a rich honor that I savor.  The parameters of the contest limited prose submissions to a single page, double-spaced.  Of course, by sharing the news of the award, I opened myself to the inevitable requests to read the winning piece.  With no small amount of humility, then, I reprint it below, affording the reader the opportunity to argue with the judges.  It is, as they rightly discerned, a dark piece, but ultimately a hopeful one.  As far as I am concerned, it is that hope which is far more important than the prose.  If, then, you find any inspiration to join me in that hopefulness, that would be more precious to me than the prize money.  With that, then - keeping in mind that it was written in August - the submission:

It is hot here.  

That isn’t unusual in these latter days of summer, but the heat is compounded by extended drought.  It has not rained for weeks.  The grass browns and refuses to grow.  The wildflowers drip their color.  The sunflowers bow their heads, no longer able to seek the sun.  Great cracks cleave the soil.  Across the road, the corn, for which this farmland is famous, is shriveling.  The rivers, once flowing and then reduced to simply muddy soil, are now but hardened dirt.  No longer navigable by boat, we walk there.

It is hot here.  And dry.  And all of us are withering.

I am talking not just about the climate, but about the cultural climate as well in which nothing has the relational breath to grow.  Fecundity is yesterday’s virtue.  The present season is loud, but thoughtless; roiling but stifling.  Rhetorical flames scorch and savage, and the cracks pull wider, deepening.

It is hot here.  And suffocatingly dry.  We, too, are cleaving.

Summertime should be the season when the promissory notes of spring come due.  We should be plucking and savoring the nurtured and nourished harvest.  Instead we shelter away, avoiding the yellowed leaves and wrinkling fruit of our gardens and orchards and communities, praying for rain.

Rain from the clouds, and cooling rain from each other.  In the meantime, we are withering.

 

And then I recall that the native plants in the prairie – the species with deep roots adapted through the centuries to the vagaries of climate and diverse abuse – depend upon occasional fires to clear invasive encroachments and crack open protective seed shells so that new life can flourish.

We pray, then, for rain; and for roots anchored that deep, and for seeds of new life liberated by the fires that encircle us.

We pray that fecundity - yesterday’s virtue – might yet be tomorrow’s hope.