Blood in a Drought Year by Joe Cottonwood

In a midnight thunderstorm, Jeannie phones
to say a young man pounded on her door
dark and bleeding like a redwing blackbird
so she wrapped his ribs in a sheet.
“Wait a minute. You let him in?”
“Of course! He’s darling!”
Jeannie is 80, still a coquette.

I go next door to Jeannie’s house.
On the floor, drops of blood.
Back yard I find a sheet, scarlet stain.

She won’t let me call the cops.
“He’s the stabbee,” she says. “Not me.”
The oak trees drip but the rain has stopped.
Jeannie shivers hugging her own chest and says
“No matter how badly my body hurts,
nights like this keep me alive.”

Thunderstorms drench the night,
quickly pass. After lightning,
the air is so crisp, so fresh.
We need the rain.



Joe Cottonwood can’t help it. He’s drawn to mountains and a more hardscrabble way of life. From Maryland at the foot of Appalachian ridges, he settled in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California among wildfire and redwoods and the occasional lion.