Hopi Rain Dance
by Daril Bentley
The dust-storm land is dry.
The Creator withholds
the mercies of his tears.
Each tear is more precious
than gemstone
where sand is rock
and grass is bone.
Their lives a cloud enfolds
in rivers of years.
They danced thus
long ago. They still dance
for life on loan to try
through shepherd’s flock—
through laughter, pain,
and known and chance.
They wear a silver sky
and a turquoise drop of rain.
We wear metal molds.
But this is close to our own
experience—
the land-bound of us
who have danced in fields
rescued from our own
arid little metropolitan worlds.
Pushcart Prize nominee Daril Bentley is the author of several books of poetry and more than a hundred poems published in journals in the US, UK, and Ireland. He has been a semifinalist for the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award and a runner-up for the New Mexico Book Award for Poetry. He makes his home in Elmira, NY in the Chemung River Valley.
