"Drought Year" contains three stanzas that successively increase by one line: the first stanza has five lines; the second, six; the third, seven. The overwhelming majority of the poem's lines are in iambic tetrameter and the rhyme scheme, though necessarily different because of variances in each stanza, consists of three sets of end-rhymes: abaccin the first stanza, aabbccin the second, and aab-bcccin the third. All the poem's rhymes are of one syllable and thus "masculine."