Trials of Ownership

The title to the land’s a piece of paper,
a piece of paper’s no match for the wind
smearing a summer sky with signs of wrath,
a wind that takes shape in a crest of clouds,
the many-bladed wind scoops dirt and moves
topsoil from fields to saturate the air,
piles purple mountains lined with branching fire,
rips into tender corn with hail and pours
rivers of rain across the moving edge
of weather fronts, swells waterways with floods
to wash away the best black fertile earth
a man can own this side the grave and shoves
whole farms downstream into the Mississippi.