And where a blue stream sings cautiously a barren land feeds hungrily. An evil moon bleeds drops of death. The earth burns brown. Grass shrivels and dries to a yellowish mass. Earth wears a dun-colored dress like an old woman wooing the sun to be her lover, be her seetheart and her husband bound in one.
Farmers heap hay in stacks and bind corn in shocks against the biting breath of frost.
Soon cypress swamps and muskrat marshes and black fields touched with cotton will appear. I dream again of my childhood land of a neighbor's yard with a redbud tree the smell of pine for turpentine an Easter dress, a Christmas eve and winding roads from the top of a hill. I feel the pulse within my throat my heart fills up with hungry fear while hills and flatlands stark and staring before my dark eyes sad and haunting appear and disappear. Then when I touch this land again the promise of a sun-lit hour dies. The greeness of an apple seems to dry and rot before my eyes.