Watonwan County

© Mary Saracino


Baptized by the fine dust
of gravel-country roads
my city-slumbering soul
is reborn in Watonwan County.

My skin tingles,
touched by the soft layers
of generations born and dead,
rooted secure in this
blue-black earth.

I idle an afternoon
on a mattress of grass
contemplating the blue
vastness of the sky
and listen to the
silence carried on the wind.

I long to brave the awesome joy
of a simply country life,
to breathe deep
the air fragranced with cow sweat
and chicken dung
and stretch wide my eyes
mesmerized by acres
of brown-tasseled fields of corn
ripening in the August sun.


* * * * *

Mary Saracino is a novelist, memoir writer, and poet. Her most recent novel, Heretics: A Love Story (2014) was published by Pearlsong Press. Her novel, The Singing of Swans (Pearlsong Press 2006) was named a 2007 Lambda Literary Awards finalist in the Spirituality category. She co-edited (with Mary Beth Moser) She Is Everywhere! Volume 3: An anthology of writings in womanist/feminist spirituality (iUniverse 2012), which earned the 2013 Enheduanna Award for Excellence in Women-Centered Literature from Sofia University. For more information about Mary, visit www.marysaracino.com and http://www.pearlsong.com/mary_saracino.htm