Liza Porter

Del Bac

1.
In Tucson, dust rises from the land
so close to her, she can cup it in her hands.
She stirs her tea, speaks softly
to describe this: what she would do if she could
make the rivers run again.
 
Del bac she is called. Or punta de agua,
the Spanish words overriding the Pima.
It is true: water used to rise up
from underground and flow out
at certain points as if a fountain. So much water
it couldn't remain in the dark reaches of the earth. 
Decades ago, she says. Now she wears
long sleeves, a wide-brimmed hat made of dust
to keep out the sun. Sweat is stitched
into the fabric.  When I look for myself in her,
where a cool reflection used to exist, there is none.
 
But she and I are alike. When we look
at something, we see only that. Lack of water
does not lend itself to misinterpretation.
When we hear its flow, it is something
taking place in the past.  When I talk to her,
I think she will last only thirty more years.
 
2.
Sometimes in winter, she returns to us. 
It's been several years since the Tanque Verde
swam into the Pantano, twice as many
since the Santa Cruz flew back and forth
across its banks. Even her tears make
no indentation on this parched land. Her eyes
flit across the Sonora like great-horned owls
looking for a place to nest. 
 
It is simple. She comes to embrace the rain,
to ask for our redemption. She glides over
the surface of the wash looking for signs
of wet earth, she listens to something existing
long ago. I know what she will say many years
from now. Or tomorrow.
 
This winter, water returned to Sabino Canyon. 
They say the falls are dangerous, people
are drowning in ignorance, the mountain lion
has come to claim its home. We startle
at his presence, say someone must do something. 
She comes to see if we will learn anything at all from
too many people in the eastern bosque, too much rape
in the north. Her mouth is dammed by those
who would take her body. She hides from
our lack of compassion.
 
3.
The Catalinas? A mound of sticks and bones
burned to the ground last year. There is no word
in English to describe her sorrow. Del bac says it all.
Her constant underground weeping, her wish
to become. She has everything we could want. 
In the morning, I watch palo verde blooms fall
to the earth like yellow tears, a sure sign of
summer's coming. I write poetry instead of dancing
for rain, it accomplishes nothing. The riverbed
gives nothing. She has come to expect nothing
from us but abandonment.
 
Del bac has many different paths. The desert
holds them out, calls her into them. I am so thirsty,
who drinks her endlessly like the rest. She is as
faraway as the black clouds or the thunder of monsoons. 
There is no way to rush them but the waiting. 
Del bac, who knows exactly how long it takes
for any river wash to reach another. Any drop of rain.