Vernal Stream

Finally, there were no more telephone lines

stretching across the blue, whipped cream sky.
The blacktop had become gravel long ago,
and the lost trees, the ones that perfumed the air
and directed the wind only minutes ago, were gone
somewhere beyond the brown rolling hill's soft, belying appearance.

I was going to write a vernal stream
onto the hot barren dirt,
for I had passed it on the way here,
knew the ripe orange blossom of its proof
and the grasses course green overture,
as if I were the damp, listening wind.

The endless seeming road was ahead and behind me
as I stood with the sun,
wanting to dig barefooted into the dust and rock
until I found what I knew

would quench my thirst.

But instead, I found that I wasn't thirsty.