This is the way water thinks about the desert. The way the thought of water gives you something to stumble on. A ghost river. A sentence trailing off toward lower ground. A finger pointing at the rest of the show. I wanted to read it. I wanted to write a poem and call it “Ephemeral Stream” because you made of this imaginary creek a hole so deep it looked like a green eye taking in the storm, a poem interrupted by forgiveness. It’s not over yet. A dream can spend all night fighting off the morning. Let me start again. A stream may be a branch or a beck, a crick or kill or lick, a syke, a runnel. It pours through a corridor. The door is open. The keys are on the dashboard.
Copyright © 2014 by Elizabeth Willis. Used with permission of the author. This poem appeared in Poem-a-Day on January 2, 2014. Browse the Poem-a-Day archive.