FOR A DRY RIVER
You walk out under an old cold moon
to call for vision.
You'd settle, on nights like this, for less.
You beat the drum,
but there is no heart rhythm
to follow or find. Dry.
All you hear is the litany of your mind,
traffic, a dusty haze obscuring the distance.
Your time is eaten by lists
of little things to do.
The sounds of discord ring
where lucid air once whispered
among the stones, voices
voices where once a river ran.
Even here, a river, once.
Before too many cattle, too many cars,
too much thankless taking
in this age of blind entitlement.
As if the waters would always flow
to green the waiting desert, monsoon,
Chubasca coming…………
as if the breast would never run dry.
As if, as if there none
yet unborn
to hunger and to thirst.
The river is dry.
And you hold your hands to the mountain.
You ask, "Whose hands are these?"
Am I not also this land?
One small and moving piece of it?
Are there any to remember?
Where have they gone, the friends of my youth?
Coyote moon celebrant, singing in the canyons,
Saguaro, the Fingers of God
pointing to the stars,
Loba, Puma, Roadrunner;
even Snake and Scorpion,
(who leave all stones best unturned.)
Gone to postcards,
kachina dolls made in China.
I sing to the ghosts now.
Spirals are written
among the holy rocks
mute remembrance even here
where once a river ran.
Lauren Raine (2002)
