Poem Panting Like a Deer for Water

Here, river runs dry until deluge

A body could die of thirst

or drown under a cloudless sky

I like to walk in the arroyo

past prickly pear and alders

I’m told the river flows under

this arid bed Her movement unbound

I want to feel it—that subterranean stirring

permeation as path

Jesus said those who believe without seeing

are blessed but can I be a tongue

Can I see anything I don’t already know

I ask the river to turn me holy

unkink my garden hose

and let cement steps cascade

There are places in the desert of saturation

Spots beneath sand where snowmelt

cleansed by the rock it penetrated, waits

There are days—maybe weeks—in spring

When river flows low and green

looking, if you don’t know any better, pure

And sometimes in the canyon a spirit

splits the air, subsumes everything in her path

panting to make estuary with ocean

I want to know where holiness pools

Erase my edges, O God

Crack me like an egg

Aubrey Yarbrough is a graduate of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College where she received the Ellen Bryant Voigt Scholarship. Her work has appeared in New American Writing, Spillway, and Los Angeles Press. She lives in Los Angeles.