sometimes hope
dries up in the heat of August when
what was a force tumbling down the mountain
has left the creek bed brittle and the rocks parched
and roasting under the drenching sun
and you try to remember what it is like in winter
after the gray days of rain when the creek sounds like a gargling goddess
and you wonder what it means that things just up and disappear
that the realness of one moment dissolves into what is no longer
and you wonder if you can get through winter to summer to winter again
through all the floods and evaporations
the shifts that measure your patience in raindrops and sundials
in mud and cracked earth
and you wonder what it means to know what will happen
that water will run and then will run out
that hope will be sometimes