Poetry vault: Between Floods

Water, man.

By Zach Hively
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Recently, nearby, an arroyo carried so much sand to the Chama River that it plugged and diverted the flow. This is the power of water in the desert—and I have no doubt this has been happening, in moments, for as long as there has been a river through this valley.

The problem now, of course, is that people live and farm along this river and this arroyo. We humans don’t function on geologic time; we need and expect water to stay where we found it.
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I understand these people along the Chama are receiving help and support. I hope I understand right. I also hope that we can start to (re)learn how to live in a world that has always shifted under our feet and over our heads … because these changes are accelerating. ​

ANYWAY. Thinking about the river and my own local tributary to it, where I walk most days with the dogs—feeling into it—this poem came out. Surprise: it might change after I post it! I’d be silly to think a river poem could remain unrevised for good.


Don't ask me what
this poem means.
It is no more impervious
 
than any of us, absorbing,
steeping, evaporating
as we go.
 
This poem changes
when you read it, when
each person reads it,
 
gives itself away like
a river souvenir, shoes
squelching on the walk home.
 
I gawp at this, my little
river, maintaining its
riverness no matter
 
who steps in it, drinks
from it, thinks for one
moment they can stack
 
some rocks to pool it
against its own definition.
Even when it runs dry
 
—it runs. That's all
this is: a poem, the way
all I am is me, always
 
in motion, especially when
committed to some temporary
map between floods.

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