Drought Contingency Implementation

I’ve begun to dream of water.

Cool, wet, luminous, nearly-forgotten water.

It’s rained once in eight-three days.

Only the sidewalk was wet, the blades of grass

too dry to absorb even the mild mist.

In my dream, I float on a turquoise lake

like I’d seen once on a postcard of Lake Mead.

The water is incandescent, glowing, alive

with movement, swells and currents passing beneath me,

quenched by the nothingness of its purity.

My neighbor waters every day, sneaking out after dark

to soak her turf grass, the kind that takes water and water

and water of the kind we don’t have. I consider

reporting her. See something, say something. But

I’m complicit. Once she’s back in her house,

I slip over the fence and walk barefoot on her wet grass.

Previously published in Western Spaces, Western Places, Local Gems Press