Parched and twisted,
my mind reflected the desert
surrounding me this last year,
emptied and lost.

The sun there scorches
and thins all it touches,
a child’s plastic rattle
half buried in the ocher dust
shattered in my hand
when pulled, brittle shards,
and I bled.

I have been concentrated
down to essential elements,
all extraneous softness
near completely drawn away,
dispersed into the driving winds.

Bone and blood yearns
for that which I once knew:
verdant grasses rippling
in a softer, soughing breeze,
trees like sentinels on the horizon
guarding entrance to Eden,
and my tissues expanding to store
the humid green that hovers
within the very air,
the path appearing
before me, pulled home.

“The land knows you, even when you are lost.” Robin Wall-Kimmerer