Creek Bed

by Eve Castle

There’s a creek bed snaking along our backyard
dried up and forgotten.

In a deluge
Columbine, 911, Iraq
in the senseless taking of Amish daughters

it flows red
soaking the ground at our feet

we sink into the muck

stare
for the briefest of moments

then we blink, it ebbs
mocking how quickly we forget

even as we lie in it
stretched out among the bones
stones for pillows.

With Mortality is a Creek Bed I used symbolism and dropped everything else I had in the original poem. I've gone back and forth with the title, original is Mortality is a Creek Bed, but I've left it as simply Creek Bed wondering if that is sufficient for someone to get to the topic that I had in mind at writing this one: our mortality.

I thought leaving "mortality" off would bring many to interpret the creek bed, the "muck" as violence in our world... we do also seem to turn from it and it snakes along our "backyard/dried up and forgotten" as we drink our coffee, talk on the phone, go to work... This interpretation goes hand-in-hand with my original intent so I've left it open.

I also played with what person to write it in. I've ended up with the collective "we" because it is a general statement about the majority of mankind.

My initial concept was to portray how we live as if we are immortal, despite the fact that “…we lie in it/stretched out among the bones/stones for pillows.” Death comes at us all the time and of late this includes a bridge collapse into the Mississippi and three suicide bombers in Iraq. Simply watch the evening news. Yet, we “stare/for the briefest of moments” and are mocked by death because of how “promptly we forget”. In an instant we are back to our daily routine. We don't use the death around us to prompt us to live our lives any differently... at least many of us don't.