Dry places

In the dry places, men begin to dream.

Where the rivers run sand,
    there is something in man that begins to flow.

West of the 98TH Meridian -
    where it sometimes rain and it sometimes doesn’t
        – towns, like weeds, spring up when it rains,
                dry up when it stops.

But in a dry climate, the husk of the plant remains.
The stranger might find, as if preserved in amber,
    something of the green life that was once lived there,
        and the ghosts of men who have gone on to a better place.

The withered towns are empty, but not uninhabited.
Faces sometimes peer out from the broken windows,
    or whisper from the sagging balconies, as if this place –
        now that is dead – had come to life.

As if empty it is forever occupied.

                            Wright Morris, The Works of Love