Napa Valley

The snake dry air
Blowing from the distant desert
The barren sterile hills
Blackened by the scars
Of the summer fires
Skeletons of trees
Hanging from the sky
Blue to the point of aching
Of being sore in the eyes
Even the lake
Haunted by the Zodiac killer
Is desiccated
Whistling in the pounding heat
The meagre rattling bushes
Dormant
In the absence of wind
No one will be saved
No one will be loved
As the Californian vultures
Are towering
Over the dying stars
Of a lying night.