The Amargosa
The river that runs underground
keeps no calendar.
It surfaces, sometimes,
for a mile, for a season,
for the length of one heron's patience —
then declines again into rumor,
into the pale arithmetic of salt.
I have walked above it
for years
and not known.
The cottonwoods know.
The toads know.
The men who came here once
to bury their names know.
What is faith
but the practice of standing
where you were told water would be?
After a March walk near Tecopa.