Dust Bowl

—After photographs by Dorothea Lange taken in the Texas Panhandle

Alone, a woman stands in black and white
surveying a discolored sky above
and nothing on the earth around her, save
a windmill, with its blades congealed on film,

vain, futile. Pride has not deserted her,
her stance proclaims; but she has nothing else—
no hope, and no defiance possible.
Despair inhabits her; a hand may start

to sketch a gesture, loosely, but it falls
in uselessness. Her eyes, whatever hue
in fact, are dark; her face is drained of all
futurity, as arid as the soil.

To act is meaningless; the land resists
whatever project that she might conceive.
Her husband, children—absent from the scene
of tragedy. She bears it all, arms crossed.

—Catharine Savage Brosman