Storm in Drought
by
Lynn Hoggard
Lynn Hoggard
Lynn Hoggard received her Ph.D. in comparative literature from the University of Southern California and currently work at Midwestern State University, where she is a professor of English and French and the coordinator of humanities. In 2003, the Texas Institute of Letters awarded her the Soeurette Diehl Fraser award for best translation.
For several years, she was an arts writer for the Times Record News in Wichita Falls and wrote more than six hundred articles, features, and reviews. She has published five books: three French translations, a biography, and a poetry anthology. Her poetry has appeared in 13th Moon, Clackamas Literary Review, Concho River Review, Descant, New Ohio Review, The Oklahoma Review, Soundings East, Summerset Review, Wild Violet, and Xavier Review, among others.
It comes on
dark, relentless,
blowing eighty miles an hour,
snaps a sycamore,
smashes it against a car,
as lightning flashes, thunder roars,
and wet debris
blasts in all directions.
Then just as suddenly
it's gone.
More frightened by rain's absence
than by its force,
we slowly clear the land.
We bow our heads in gratitude
for this fierce, this brutal kindness.
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