THIRST

She sits almost singing, a soft humming amidst ferns and wild mustard on stream’s glistened

edge. He skips stones flat as flapjacks that shine like newly minted coins across rolling water.

Images simmer inside them, sensations and pictures of thirst, its wordless thrust towards

quenching abound in their bones and their heads. Like squads of mice or the inchoate earth

trembling moments before an earthquake—that nefarious big one—crashes under us ripping

our land, no one left standing after its inhuman, monstrous majesty.

He tosses the final rock of the morning. She ceases her almost singing at once. Above

surrounding them a forest of Douglas Firs stretches forever, yet now has nearly dissolved into

vague quiet. The trees seem to beckon for something from this couple, perhaps a gift, a

message, primal gesture. They too may be creatures of thirst, it’s uncertain.

She stands sauntering towards him; her ring finger held high towards these trees. He gazes

at water, then sky; knows the blue dome above is asking as well. Again, for what he lacks any

knowledge.

Now she’s kissing the crown of his head, now kneading his brawny brown shoulders. She smiles,

feeling the calm of a wordless response—his breathing, this softening muscle, a need to do

nothing at all.

Their thirst for each other quickens like daybreak as forest quivers and sky sighs in tender

breezes; what’s moving towards quenching becomes fully slaked. The mice return to a far realm

hidden from humans. The incipient temblor retreats deep into earth, falls gradually inert into

soil’s welcomed stability.

Stream tumbles and rolls in its ancient ongoing way; he and she arrive where they started yet

easy and still underneath forest and ferns, this wondrous sky of contentment where all now

abide well nourished, and simple. So very simple....