Two poems named "Water" by Michelle Otero

Water

We tell the children tales
of thunderstorms. Each May we drop
rose petals into trickling acequia, invoke
San Ysidro for good harvest, good rain
pray these petals seed clouds. We remember
summers of fire, haze over mesa, sunset behind a scrim
of smoke, torches in the Jemez, torches in the Sangres
kindling night roads from Santa Fe to Santo Domingo.

What if it never rains again?

What if
    it never rains
        again?

Water

This is New Mexico. Here
life walks in circles. In drought, we
the people look to the skies,
put a hand to the ground.
In drought, we
the people
are water.