A Poem about Water

Does water dream

Of empty streams

Rolling down hills

Puddles and spills

Under green shades

And into oceans fades

One sunny California afternoon I found myself in a cafe. It was a cool respite and filled with poets of all ages and places. It was the monthly Modesto Poetry Foundation meeting. There while I ate a burger an elderly man with thin white hair stood up tall. He was a member of the foundation and with soft questioning words my soul he found. Does water dream of empty streams? He said as the room fell into silence. The rest of the poem is lost to memory. I should have written it down but it was one poem of many that day. It wasn’t until months later, as I made my leave of Modesto, I began yearning and searching for water’s dreams. After a year, I gave in and decided to make something new and rekindle the dream.

This poem reminds me of childhood. A ball, your cousins and friends, already split in two, rushing to the field and roaring with joy to see it empty. Everyone rushes in, some through the gate, others hurtling themselves over the fence, climbing, jumping, and clinging to each other. The ball flies high into the air. The screaming and laughter erupts into shouts, pointed commands, and desperate running. The camera pans out and up. The field is full of inscrutable figures running back and forth. The shouts and laughs fade into the din of the city, busses stopping, dogs barking, the rush of the highway, sirens in the distant, the lazy buzzing of a prop airplane, the warm hum of a summer day…