Dowser’s Prayer

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I am religious
the way small desert towns
are named after water;
eleven or twenty worn buildings,
brown hills, dust.

I know this land was once
a paleolake. I can remember it
foggy and moss-grown,
mastodon and ground sloth drinking
in the gray dawn

of time, but that baptism
has long since dried.
Now even my sweat wicks away
before it reaches my lips,
snatched away in a sandy gust.

Thirsty, I see water
everywhere I look—
here in Sand Wash
or Indian Wells
or Cave Creek—

written in seashells
embedded eye-level
in a limestone cliff,
in turgid cactus, virga
like a gray smudge,

mesquite roots deep
as the water table,
afternoon cumulonimbus.
I draw it from dry stalks
like the kangaroo rat
or Moses.

Mornings, I lick dew from my own skin.
And when white-hot afternoon
glare becomes unbearable, when
flash flood seems more dream
than threat,

I rest in the shade
and drink the canyons
with my eyes: turbid stone
flowing thickly from one wave
into another.