We will begin a secret revolution, you and I.
Visit me and we will begin our plotting when you arrive.
Come carefully through the desiccated hills,
where flowers whither into rasping petals
as they bloom, the expectation of fragrance
dulled to nothing more than reminiscence,
soldiers having stamped all greenness
into drifting dunes and silence.
They stop at my door and demand
that I solve their thirst—their eyes are mad,
their mouths are crusted with suspicious dirt.
They have forgotten hatred, are unaware of hurt,
and I am just an old woman, not afraid to show her fear.
I show my missing teeth, grumble nonsense for them to hear.
Visit me. Let the dust hide your journey through the hills,
let your footsteps be muffled by the stomp of military drills.
Your son is an aquifer, a subterranean tide.
My son is a dowsing rod, set to quake when you arrive.
