image by Joel Brotzman

Somewhere in this country
of dry furrow and hard hill
the scabbed ground cracks
to a deep blade of shining,
a bright upwelling,
mud, rush, mess, hurry of voices,
the run, the flood, the telling.

I walk forward, careful.
The forked switch leads me.
Surely it will dip, leap
there at the end of the field
where dead stalks rub each other,
or there in the dry creekbed
where rocks tell the tale of torrent.

I must learn to live drily.
What to carry. What to leave.
What to drink instead of water.
What to wash the dust away with.
What to listen to. Wind
will tell me what to say.
Stone will lead me to beginning.

~ Ursula K. LeGuin