From the sky, the land below stretches out in memory. The Colorado etches her serpentine path through a landscape both familiar and far away. Below the grama grasses, little bluestem, mesquite, cottonwood and juniper whisper in the hot wind as night falls over a land as known to me as my own body.
What is it to know a land?
To love its contours and fissures, its smells and colors.
Is it possible to be so utterly familiar with a place, an Other place, as I am with this one?
My heart aches for lake smells and cicadas droning into the summer heat.
This land is no longer a place I call home, but it will always be the blood coursing through my veins.
