when its this dry you feel every drop

fog this morning. no rain...just fog.
inhaling the wetter than usual air soothes my lungs, my nostrils, my skin. the smell throws me home...to the land of swamps, ponds and lakes.
the extreme dryness of everyday life makes a slighty damp morning like this seem ultimately sacred,
and this is how the desert mirrors my life.

long stretches of just enough...not really enough...makes just a little bit of enough seem like a deluge.
but this mornings fog will burn off with the rising sun.
evaporate to the norm of dry and the roots growing deeper deeper looking for wet.
roots grow whether i like it or not.

sometimes touch comes to me. or laughter. or even children running through the pasture.
sometimes love hangs thin like the fog. til the sun burns it off and i'm left with roots burrowing deeper still....looking for enough underground.

you won't find soft broad leaves in the high desert. green only lives right up against any precious water source. and even the cottonwood leaves have a waxy shell. soft broad and open loses too much water too quickly. things here are narrow leaf pointy thorned and protected.

standing in a brief fog of almost enough i think i might be through with thorned and protected.

the swamps of broad and open haunt me. mists of touch and love burrow deep so as not to evaporate in the heat.
burn off.
everything always burns off.
but i'm rooted
i have to be.
rooted like a cottonwood tree. waxy. impervious.
patiently thirsty and dreaming of a deluge.