How hard is it to reclaim the desert?
Can we help the plants grow thick and dripping
into the cracked sanddirt and lush it once more
(as perhaps it was those million years ago---
imagine deserts crawling across the continents)
into a fresh head of lettuce, ready to be carved
into suburbs and highways through?
Will we need to bend the atmosphere,
harness the vortices in their cold upper world,
and bring from the ocean the dirtsoak, the mud?
Will we be able to solve every flow, or in frustration
deprive one forest of the water
for another?