Desert Water

For G.M.H.

Summoned by the desert washed smell of water
we go down into high ken of rock and river,
wind-stirred trees along the blue shimmer
running wild-loud over hard dry fodder.
Hawks and redwings trill above bullfrog gutter.

It’s been centuries since I heard this sound over and over. 
Cold water touches an old well, makes me remember
the hands of long ago, silted root, rock and alder
buried under longing to know, the same slow circle 
eddying and eddying in the current’s middle.

Time, incomprehensible, is the river moving at dusk.
Bodies of water come from water, in this grotto
we yield to it all the fury of the heart: what was sought
and not won.  Our children lost, unsung.  The world
of dreams laid open.  You, once mine, gone.

Look.  Up, under the sagging bridge a swell
of swallows swirls over the water, plunges, arcs
up in mid-air, glitters green against white cliffs,
flies to the beating rushes, sings through trees
while the river below glistens, breathes through

each body, aware.  We have come to the great
mystery, always emptying, always there,
the dearest freshness deep down things,
this open canyon rippling river water,
these light fluttering blankets of wings.

Desert Water, forthcoming, Lithic Press, 2009