Ground too long left dry

Grows hard and brittle,

Shrinks and breaks,

And crumbles from the cracks

To dust that trembles at a breath

And when it’s in those fragments

Sometimes true and driving rain

Can only scar:

The rushing battery

Will drive the pieces, crushed, away.

But water that, in deluge,

Might sweep over broken ground

And leave it torn,

Scraped bare, still dry,

And yet more wounded in its wake

May hover in a mist,

Fall lightly, hover – slowly see

The clods grow dark,

The cracks grow close

With healing softening.