Lyrics to a song I may or may not write

I used to blow my nose with golden leaf 

While whining for something to eat

Now I scratch without that righteous pain

But with hope I'll find an honest vein

And follow that gold to its source 

Where I will want for nothing more

We displaced and desperate people of the high desert,
We sunburned and murderous pioneers,
We scrabbling, subduing, culture-confused saints,

Have learned to expect a harsh hand from the earth,
The sand-filled winds, Seven-month winters, constant drought warnings,

And we know there is virtue in weathering the dry cold, dry heat, dry springs,
Not a self-flagellation to assuage guilt (forwehavenonenorshouldwenorwillweever),
Just a beauty-in-adversity, refining fire, cold-hard-reality type of thing,

So that when a freak hurricane sends rain (real rain) inland from the west coast and we wake up to
Mist burning off in the rising sun, dampness and health that briefly revives the brown grass and
Creates the dew-covered, glistening effect we know only from vacations,

The intrusion of the outside world into our skin and nose and hair is a foreign feeling,
And tied up in some unformed idea of loss, or a sacrifice we didn't realize we keep choosing to make, or an ancestral home, or innocence bartered for independence, or a secret forest clearing we pictured as a child and that used to carry a... feeling... with it and why does it not anymore-

And the relief!  When the pores constrict again, mid-afternoon, and the skin is vulnerable only to the clean and negligible corrosion of wind and time