I carry water from the river to my chest
walk, walk, water walk,
the slosh spill has my bare feet
winking, sunning themselves
with the salve for any throat
a screen, a sheen, a perpetual dream
whose clarity matches
the essence of living and grace.
My bucket is a drum
whose upside down bottom
decompresses at the suggestion:
empty;
metal concavity maintained
facing up until I take the handle
and meander back to our creek.
Taken in shared perspective,
water runs between sources and oceans
smaller and less inclined
to share excess
(is that politics?)
whispers make pipes
between ears and corn
and the smoke that pervades our nostrils.
Put it out
fails the burn test
conflagrations heat congregations
while prefixes presuppose
that what follows connects to our thirst;
call it an overuse of the we,
a royal prerogative
over-courted next to the basin
whose bare desert bottom
reveals the state of our dreams.
Roman Ryan 