SandScript 2021

SHE WAS NEAR
Desert Ehrhart
She was near.
I could tell as the air was thickened and moist
and electric, stimulating my senses.
I was once caught on the wrong side, at the wrong time,
wandering the wrong arroyo,
taken down, washed away in a flood
with the rest of the unsuspecting debris.
When she came in, the sky was fierce and pouring, lightning cracking.
The streets already flooding.
With the long drawn out heat of summer,
thoroughly penetrating, beat into everything,
heavy, pressing me further
into the depths of my mattress, sheets strewn far from me.
I was ready for the release.
And as quickly as her presence and the floods poured in,
the sky became clear
and the sun again upon me.
My only memory of her found through the following weeks
in the lush growth and bloom of the desert.
Monsoon season.
165