The grass is turning brown and the soil is hard as concrete. The creeks have dried up, and the trees are wilting. Buzzards circle overhead, waiting for the sick or the old or the lame to drop in their tracks. Oracles are consulted, but their cryptic offering dry up and blow away in the slightest breeze. White, wet puffy clouds float by overhead, taunting us. They depart over the ridgetops, bitter as unrequitted love. Livestock carcusses dot the pasture. Frogs burrow deeper into what little mud lies on bottom of the pond. The dragonflies have shrivelled up. We're tieing the mattresses to the tops of the trucks now, about to head West. One more dustbowl cloud and we'll really lose it, run shrieking up the hillsides, a trail of dead cats behind us. We need rain, but there's none in the forecast.