The peculiar geometry of a grass patch

The pattern of grass resembles one of those middle school geometry problems:
overlapping green circles, with curious yellow patches between their arcs
wherever the water sprinklers failed to reach.
As if someone wants to ask the area of the encroaching decay,
or the ratio of the harshness of this climate to
the persistence of human need to cultivate life wherever we settle in.

The pallid grass seems to have already adopted
that brown-gray camouflage that I have seen not only in cacti,
but even in a cat
—which, to my surprise, was not sickly, but rather hidden for the desert clime.

In this rainless land, green often depends on human stubbornness.
Gravel and cacti instead of trees;
cloudless skies for days on end
    instead of the imminence of a downpour;
no being woken up by a thunderstorm
    and no falling asleep to its grace afterward;
not even a drizzle
    for my parched soul.

There is an irony to studying photosynthesis in this land,
where light is abundant but water is scarce
and nature perpetually struggles with thirst.
Perhaps, this peculiar line in the grass
    warns me off to stay on my side, lest my spirit itself is desiccated.
Or, perhaps, I am called to courage by it
to stand,
    if not between the darkness and the light,
at least between the sallow and the verdant.

Melih Sener