The cistern

There is an oblong cement piece left on a high point of sloping land where a cistern and a spring had once been. From that point spring water was carried downhill through long pipes to irrigate a vegetable garden, a nursery and farm animals. We don't know when the spring dried up and even its existence with the passage of time has become mythical.

In the fourth year of drought water has become more precious and scarcer than ever in recent memory. The soil holds no moisture, invasive weeds that other years persisted through the summer drought are now extinct. The trees like everything else in the farm depend on natural moisture and have been struggling to survive with mixed and depressing results; a walnut tree has completely died, others barely survive, fruit trees have branches drying and there are signs of early autumn with foliage changing color and beginning to drop.

In the heat of a summer day I find my way to the place of the cistern and stand under the shadow of a walnut tree dreaming of cool clear water bubbling up from the spring to the cistern and its pipes reaching all over to quench the thirst of the land, here, there, everywhere, resurrection of the trees…