And Now It Sings

She stands in wet and likes it; drips rolling around the brim of her split-bamboo conicalhat to fall on thirsting clay. Here's
weather at last, there having been sun,sun, sun, a lip-cracking and tree-splittingdry, since the vernal equinox. Nothing
had been vernal about it, and her landknew so. The very fir limbs sulked;willows on creek banks browned up and died;
birds fell everlastingly silent, droppingon needle-sharp tufts of what had been haymowbeneath their perches in rattling cedars;
fish sought pools deeper than any there were,crowding in together, fin by fin, gulping and grunting, then rolling over
to bump along hot, slimed rocks and lodgesomewhere, stinking. Her crops had miniaturized,flavorful but insufficient to pay her labor;
She'd lost heart and let vining morning gloriesinto her cracked farm at last. And now herecomes weather. Not enough to top off the well,
maybe, and certainly not enough to start the creek.But here she stops, catching chill -- watchinga goldfinch settle on fence wire with a twist
of foraged thistledown. It drops the meal,opens its beak, cranes skyward. And now it sings.