The Praises of an Impoverished Land

I've just completed a road trip from Chicago to Texas to California, and much of that land was desert. I love the desert, the American Southwest is truly gorgeous. Driving through for hours, I got to do a lot of thinking about that land, and this poem is partly the result.

I think the desert is a land of thankfulness.

For each life that owes existence

to an environment so inhospitable

cannot but be grateful,

no givens in a land

whose only grace is bristly.

Indeed, the desert rejoices

over a single drop of rain

that falls from a cloudless sky,

for the drought is at an end,

and as soon as the soil

receives its meager gift,

it drifts back up on high

that it might bless another

who needs it more.