The land looks deceptively soft with pale grasses, but as far as you can see there is nowhere to rest. Fallen, faded stalks of grasses have baked like unbaled hay. Now you see each blade is a beautiful, brittle illusion of home. Still it sways in the wind. All around is sage, and what you want is wet black dirt, and the Kentucky Bluegrass smell of lust that rises up from the backyard in June. There the Mississippi swells underground until you can taste the water just beneath the soil. Your hope swings like a divining rod. The desert poppy has thorns.