Streams in the Desert Make a Sucking Sound

Mari could not resist taking a photo.
Maybe it was the rain. This is Tucson, you know.
Maybe it was the twenty-year-old golf umbrella
which has outlasted the golf clubs--long gone--
ever since too many eye operations
and our move from Minnesota.
I do not know her motives.

I went out to watch the water run down the rock river
across our yard: it did not happen.
It probably never will happen, since that
for it to happen the river will have to gather behind
the wall on the uphill side, crowd through the sluice gates,
and overwhelm the dusty sponge that is our yard.

Before the rains can run anywhere,
they have to satisfy immediate thirsts.
What is left over rolls to the dry river bed
and does it all again. Several of our neighbors
say they have seen the river run.

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