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Lauren Camp USA
A Colloquy On Water
We have brought you to the desert,
seven thousand feet above the sea, where the bare ground
seams itself to the unyielding sky.
You are in a region with its own definition of surface tension.
We ask you to understand that the earth is shallow here,
unsweetened,
a thin veneer of sediment and below that, knotted clay.
This ground is voracious, but clogged. We do what we can.
We are a people of anticipated guilt, each seed, a mouth,
each flower, a confession. We collect each bead of water
like beggars after coins, and dole out our sum
on the few green corners of our land.
We are efficient and thorough; we chart each tree,
chart the chewable sounds of rain, our ears cunning
and satisfied when each drop, each small volume of liquid,
resonates on the metal roof, then gathers in the gutters,
and funnels down through dry grooves around our home.
We talk endlessly about prisms of sun on the land,
the dry air and wind. We discuss these things in the morning
and again when we pour coffee and make bread.
It is here that you learn about water, not in grottoes and ponds
or snow-glossed trails. This tangled earth, this withering…
Look here, where the wild olive lives, the berried sumac,
this earth, its tart face waiting, the crabapple weeping,
the honey locust, black currant, purple ash, the amurs
and cottonwoods standing, stiffening;
it is here that we draw maps from clouded dishwater
and the fertile remains of each shower,
the puddle of liquid we collect when we wash clothes.
In this place, where we constantly rescue water.
first published in Manorborn
© Copyright, 2015,
Lauren Camp. |
