Nevertheless,
the blind pupfish burst open
into the sometime stream,
dodging pebbles,
wiggling away from shadows,
darting back and forth
through the dusty water.
I wonder
how many eggs
lie waiting in places
the water never touches.
I wonder
how they decide
or do they
to throw their live bodies out
into the flowing streamers,
the warm scarves
of water
that exist haphazardly,
and run,
for awhile,
across the desert pavement,
that exist uncertainly,
like my poems,
or my marriage,
like any stream
I’d hoped
would teem
with life
