A poem by Wendell Berry from “Farming: A Hand Book”
"Water"
I was born in a drought year. My mother waited in the house, enclosed in the sun and the dry ceaseless wind, for the men to come back in the evenings, bringing water from a distant spring. Veins of leaves ran dry, roots shrank. And all my life I have dreaded the return of that year, sure that it is still somewhere, like a dead enemy's soul. Fear of dust in my mouth is always with me, and I am the faithful husband of the rain. I love the water of weals and springs and the taste of roofs in the water of cisterns. I am a dry man whose thirst is praise of clouds, and whose mind is something of a cup. My sweetness is to wake in the night after days of dry heat, hearing the rain.