Ode to Arid

my own photography…







She described you as ‘brown’
and ‘not to her liking’
in a turned up nose distasteful kind of way.
‘I like the green of it,’ she said
and I wanted to take my little soapbox
stand upon it
and sing your praises…

Instead,
I sit down, righteous pen in hand, and
write an ode to the proven beauty that is dryness
and would argue that
green is needy, garish and greedy,
fed day after day upon relentless rain…
soaking in, sodden, superfluous super-saturation.

While the brown of it --
the golden stretches of rolling bunch grass and
Ponderosa dotted highlands are soft, undemanding
on my eyes, providing
fodder for ranging cattle and quarter horses
and contentment
for those satisfied with ‘just enough’.

…A conservative abundance.

Lesley-Anne Evans
November 2009