A Mormon literary backcountry where words and place come together.

 

 

 

 

“At the Enterprise Reservoir Dam” by Nani Furse

by admin | 4.14.10

Driving to the top
of Little Pine Creek Canyon,
I see how the reservoir fares,
how deeply it curves
against hand-mortared stone.

Home for spring break,
I’d overheard
that it’s filling up good this year.
(Was it at Terry’s Merc?
Or at the Relief Society Birthday Ball
where I watched a former cheerleader
dance in maternity clothes?)

No matter.

It’s enough to watch
water swell like metaphor
while I remember
that my father grew up
soothed by its flow
past his bedroom window
into small-town gardens.

It’s enough to taste
sagebrush in stories
of cold crawling days
that a wind captures
and shivers away.

It’s enough to hear
this birth of cascades
answering the question
now asked below:
wonder if it’ll run over
again this year?

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For Nani’s bio and another of her Spring Poetry Runoff entries, click here.

*Contest entry*

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