The sky darkened just now,
thunder tumbles over the roof tops
and suddenly the drought is lifted;
rain pours from fulsome clouds
which make good on visual promise
that hours of drenching soaking
shower lay ahead for this day.

^ Interesting massive change of the atmosphere. I'm always amazed by reading a turning point, in the opening. It entices you like a magnet.

Birds swoop through gusts
impatient to simply wait
for the drops to hit them,
they streak into the brunt of
the storm accelerating their bath.

^ It's kind of wet in here, I mean positively. I liked this image.

Men who just this morning
were suffering unquenchable
thirst now look hungrily
at their women, as though
eye shadow and rouge
washed away reveal jeune filles
that enticed them in their youth.

^ OM DEAREST GOD!
Men aren't hungry because of makeup? and when rain washed away this concealer, they turned into 'jeune filles'?? WO! amazing stanza. For now, it's my best. And 'jeune filles' kind of thickens the volume of your image.'

Live oaks, dying and brown, drip
water where their roots gave up
sending a dissolved message to
acorns buried below: "we are
gone, take root, grow strong."

^ the personification here is also alluring.

Ponds long since dried up
fill with urgency of desert
oases preparing empty basins
for life that may now
have hope of replenishing
where yesterday clams baked
on cracking flats of mud.

^ Too much details. I don't know if it's for the better... But I'm kind of NOT annoyed by it. It defines the shape.

And through it all my neighbor
looks at his gauge slowly filling,
grimly shakes his bony neck,
looks at the sky and calls to me,
"We're still 24 inches behind."

^ I knew it! I had a premonition that your end would have some amazing turning point.
But honestly, I didn't understand the very last line. lol, I know, I can be dumb. But can you pm me with what you mean>???

I'm afraid of skipping the real meaning of your poem by not fathoming the last line.!!!!

But, overall, I liked much.

A poem filled with metaphorical thought is what I most liked about it. The scenary is very nicely set from a start of dark clouds, thunder and rain to hope of rejuvenation of dying or dried nature (i.e. life/soul) in a ray of hope for replenishment. But the reader is suddenly awakened from the reveries reveries by the anticlimax of the last stanza. Perhaps the transition could have been a little less abrupt if the idea was to bring dreams to reality. But again this is a reader intrpretation, which may not be what the poet had in mind.

All in all I like your poem very much. 5/5

Glad I ran into this one. The wording was easy to follow, the flow very nice. This could have many meanings as the reader will find her/or his own. An wonderful poem done from a creative imagination

Connie

Wow wow wow amazing greatly worded and magnificently written great fantastic every great word in the books for this splendid excellen peice of work I love love loved it :) 5/5