Davis McCombs

From Ultima Thule (2000)

Though it leaks

across a space

not wide enough

to turn its jagged

 bedload into loaves and eggs,

its broken music

into song, the

course gets lost

among the twigs

and outcrops.

The wind that

rises out of bluff

and bottomland,

flaking and split-

ting, will hunt

the stream to this

lean animal:  by

August its glints

and rustlings- just

 the spoor of water

to the bobcats

that will pass

along this barren

crust.

It pours

through cracks

into the dark

and merges with

the roar of

buried currents.

Little room for

spreading skirts

of silt.  Little

use to think of

source or end or

walk, as I have,

among rootwads

and thorns,

to find the cur-

rent dwindling

in a clot of leaves-

as if it could

be held by touch

or glittering

turn of phrase.