Flash Flood
Too few words
your mouth
speaking
not in my ears.
The ears remember
the sound
like rocks once covered
by moving water
softening
rounding
not knowing
the riverbed
would become dry.
And now
I am the riverbed
in a desert.
The fine sand
covers me,
soaks in rain
when it comes,
remembers the wetness
of a flash flood.
You were the flood.
You came with your water,
your words in my ears,
and now you have
passed over me,
run downstream,
sinking into my parched earth,
disappearing around my curves,
leaving a pattern
of dark sand on pale
in the shape of rippled ribs,
the only proof
you were here.
Linda Keller
From Deep in the Wilderness, Tindari Press, 2000
