WEBVTT

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January 2021.

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Dear--.

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Year of fire, year of snow.

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Flakes loose as cotton
balls drifting down

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into our desolation.

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Chollas collapsing,
mesquites going copper

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and brittle after
months without rain.

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The rainy seasons dwindling.

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I've been reading about
fidelity to the land.

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Today's consumer
economy trains us to be

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discontented and ungrateful.

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Never did I think
to water the agaves

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until I saw them nearly dead.

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They can't stand the
heat and drought anymore.

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The people I love, for
their love of this land, who

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have said, they are leaving
soon, moving north to places

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the rain hasn't yet abandoned.

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Just a month ago,
one of them told me

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about a red-tailed hawk
sailing like a dream

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above the Santa Cruz.

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Doubled in the wastewater.

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Doubled in the water
flowing once again.

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Treated wastewater, true.

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But life doesn't care.

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Accepting what we return to it.

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When I think back to
that New Year's night,

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we walked out from
your front porch

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in Penns Valley along the
Mill Race in Pennsylvania.

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Stars sharp as flung sand
in that ridge-cradled sky.

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I think I could leave in
a moment to return to it.

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But here I am on
the street in Tucson

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where my neighbors
were born and remained

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to the third generation.

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And I'm furious about one
neighbor's hoarded trash,

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another's yard swept lifeless
and bare in glaring sunlight.

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Oleander standing guard
for neighbors I never see.

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But we sit together all
these nights so much

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nearer than to anyone else.

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Breathing in the half
darkness, dreaming.

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