In the granular finery
that follows, a Kryptonian
like Clark could get a good bath.
Not so the rest of midwestern
humanity, which faces...

            THE DUST BOWL
       (No Bastion of Humility)

     A boiling sun beating
     down on brows scrambling
     to escape stinging new sands;
     Dusty demon-hands
     scraping the inner rim
     of five states, sculpting the once-soil-
     now-clay into clods that break
     away, taking leave of the ground;
     Dry sage, crackling with age,
     tumbling around,
     driven by wind whispering
     an ancient secret;
     Coarse, all-too-human hands
     holding the children,
     sheltering young lungs
     from the smothering storm.

Today, though, the Dust Bowl²
is opposed.
It blows, it howls.  It knows, it scowls
at the brave (or mad?) man-child
who has surrounded it,
who's flown 'round and 'round it,
from its Kansan eye through its sandy mass,
to the clear skies beyond its grasp.

Clark's plan (straight outta the Wild West):
Head the storm off "at the pass,"
circle it in reverse
and form a vacuum to press it
into a twister cone; then flip it
with his twirling wrists
and change the course
of this mighty natural force,
spin it like a lariat
off into the stratosphere.
Will it work?  The answer nears.

---

² Really, this poet can't put it
in terms more apt than Steinbeck's
in The Grapes of Wrath --

"The last rains came gently,
and the did not cut the scarred earth
....(which) became pale.  The air was thin
....the dirt crust broke and the dust formed
....the wind grew stronger....the air and sky
darkened....The dawn came, but no day" --

but he can surely rally his talents
and give it 'the old college try.'