“Dry Creek Theory”
The creek left first.
By midsummer
it had folded its maps,
taken the silver fish of itself
and gone underground.
Children still followed
the chalked course
through stones and lantana,
certain that water
must remember its own face.
The magpie disagreed.
It sang from a fencepost
and nowhere else.
Years later
I found a page
inside an abandoned library book.
No title.
No signature.
Only a sentence
crossing the paper diagonally,
as though it, too,
refused to stay.
I read it once.
The words did not explain themselves.
They lifted.
Not upward.
Outward.
Like seeds choosing moisture.
I looked around
for the missing author,
that familiar ghost
critics are forever searching for.
Nothing.
Only afternoon grass
leaning east.
Only the smell
of iron after rain.
Only distance
becoming more distance.
The sentence kept moving.
It entered the trees.
It entered a dog barking
two streets away.
It entered an old memory
that had not belonged to it
until that moment.
By evening
the page was blank.
Or perhaps
I no longer knew
where the writing ended.
Perhaps that is the same thing.
A poem survives
by escaping.
Not from meaning,
but from ownership.
The creek egress.
The grass knew it too.
The untamed line
crossing the page knew this.
What leaves
is not always lost.
Sometimes departure
is the form
taken by continuation.
Tomorrow
someone else
will find water
where I found dust,
will hear a different note
inside the magpie's song,
will finish a sentence
I only happened
to begin.
So, let them.
The best poems
do not remain.
They travel
from mind to mind,
wearing our voices
for a while,
then moving on.
.
-
Author:
crypticbard (Pseudonym) (
Offline) - Published: October 9th, 2026 05:28
- Category: Unclassified
- Views: 12
- Users favorite of this poem: sorenbarrett, Tristan Robert Lange
Offline)
Comments7
What a marvelous metaphor here Cryptic yes poems like water sink over time underground but like that sentence found in the minds of a reader held incomplete. They are caried and find their way into new water where there was only dust. Anonymous, nameless they remain in the human consciousness completed by others and carried on to surface as new water. That water that once flowed in creeks gone underground and forgotten remains, evaporates and rains again to continually flow. The same water nameless but immortal. A fave my friend
Beaute review here, dear friend 🙏🏻🕊️
A great pleasure
a wonderfully deep and thoughtful piece my friend
Thank you dear friend 🙏🏻🕊️
Much enjoyed
Good write A. Doh! A fancy notice said 'Shop closed due to ingress of water'. Ingress?! Just say the darn place is flooded! lol.
They could have added 'We'll be open again when the water has egressed'. Meanwhile, no one's got the foggiest idea of what's going on, cos there's a word we don't hear every day! lol.
I LOVE that last stanza especially
arqios, I love when someone reads something in my work that I hadn’t consciously put there. Makes me want to sit down and hear them out. 🌹🖤🙏🕯️🐦⬛
'What leaves is not always lost' etc is such a good way of putting Something that can live on.
A good Write.
Those poems will never be lost Rik.
Andy
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