Once I was driving down a wash, in a Volkswagen
with someone else.
And I said to myself, my goodness,
what happens if a flood comes?
And it was in a wash, called Johnson's Wash.
This is not a political poem, but I guess it could be,
but I didn't mean it to be.
And it's called, "On Crossing Johnson's Wash".
What if a flood as big as a house,
first with a sluggish trickle of molasses,
a ball of snarling mountain lions, five gallon paint
cans and barbed wire, before it a herd of rangy cows
their udders swinging, tumbling log
shoot through our heads like straw through telephone poles?
And now, tipped with a brain, hurdle
through the foothills, spent sprawl its rebel rubble
in a fan on the desert floor, the skeleton of our car,
while it's splayed like a hand of cards.