The Wells Have Gone Dry

The sound that is the last slurp, the mud trapped in a straw.

They say the wells have gone dry in Ojai, that they have run out of water.

They say the wells have run dry in Ojai, and in other places, too. Word travels fast.

“Here, too.” The words tap, like a dry Morse code. “Here, too.”

The sound that is the last slurp, the mud trapped in a straw.

“Here, too.” Word travels. “Here, too.”

Rumor has it that cities have begun trucking in water for the lawns. While crops dry and shrivel. Such money they have! Such waste they permit.

“Here, too.” Taps another one. “Here, too. The wells have run dry.”

The dust bowl was not so long ago, not so far away. Yet we treat it as ancient history, another time, another place.

But here, too, the wells have run dry.

We have cut down trees to pave paradise, and now there is nothing to hold the soils in place. The wind howls and sweeps it up and away, up and away.

And the wells run dry. Here, too, the wells run dry.

Yet still we build more homes, carve out more holes. Imagine that always, from some magical place, somewhere not here, we will find the water.

But word flies like a wild fire. Showing up on doorsteps across this once green-carpeted land.

“Here, too. Here, too. And here, too.”

Men and women stand on their stoops, staring out at the hot blazing sun, the brilliant blue skies. Unable to drink the waters in their aquamarine swimming pools. Their grass is brown and shriveled. The dust blows with the next howling.

There is the smell of smoke on the incoming breeze.

“Here, too, here too.” Dry grass stutters across the land like locusts. “Here, too. The wells have run dry.”

We stare out at an ocean we cannot drink. Watch the endless blue skies, hoping, praying, that tomorrow the clouds will come. The rain will fall.

A mother and daughter stare at a tapestry, an ancient relic. The young girl reaches up to touch it. In this tapestry, aged and fading, they wove in the rain. It watered a garden where flowers grew and bloomed.

“Did it use to look like that, Mama?” She asks.

“Yes, love.” The mother answers, her skin, gray and dry.

She feels her mouth watering at the emerald green, the pale blue drops falling into the pond. The birds that gather at the water’s edge.

That place is now a parking lot. Where asphalt chips and cars rust. And the wells have all run dry.

Marianne was born to a family of artists, and has spent her life exploring creativity in its many facets. She was recently published in “Chicken Soup for Soul: Miracles and the Unexplainable!”

Inspired by Microcosm and their recent prompt: The Flood.