Ephemeral Stream

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. 
Credit

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.

About this Poem

“An ephemeral stream flows intermittently or seasonally, leaving a record of water, though there’s rarely water flowing in it. You can find them etched in the arid landscapes of the West and Southwest. I learned this term while walking with friends in the hills near Ucross, Wyoming.”
Elizabeth Willis