Water to the Roots

I walked in a land without water
I snapped dry branches between my fingers
Nothing lives without the dream of water
And I have seen this place look like death
Empty cabin dreams buried in refuse
Hopes the wind alone heard and remembered
Creosote pale gray and nearly leafless
Blackbrush bare and the feeling of being barren

Like a country mired in money without heart
Every sweet beauty starved into ugly profit
Driven by a demon dubbed necessity
But manufactured needs can be unmade

Not like this dry desert needing rain
Waiting, a quiet pulse beating like a
muffled drum deep beneath the sandy soil
Waiting, like a lost breath when the heart jumps

But near the end even waiting feels dead
And still the desert waits for its erratic
Lover, its impetuous unpredictable
Partner in this gray green dance of life
And when the rain comes, often in the night
Soft like a lovers hand, or in the heat,
Wild, frenzied, an outpour of passion
Like a desperate need to be loved,
to be loveable, to remember love,
driving floods, overflowing gullies,
digging sand whirlpools where washes cross
irreverently and water, water,
seeps into sand, seeps down to the roots
of all things, heals the ache of dryness, springs
life back into awareness

And then, our desert is a new woman,
a woman wild in love with everything
a woman who can’t keep her hands still for loving
for touching for caressing that green life pulse
trembling everywhere with ecstasy.