That’s far enough, I yell across the dry
riverbed where twigs shoot up between rocks
with leaves like mistaken tenses: was, were,
watch. That’s far enough—wrenching
the children from their ground into my disaster.
“I could defeat you,” one says.
The other, “no you couldn’t.”
Me: “Water could defeat us all.”

No one is listening to motherwater.

Rocks, the spaces between them, have no culture
until you have to leave: we were, I was, we wrenched
the children from was to were to whatever to who else
is in their imagined war? “Why are you trying
to defeat each other?” Watch us. Look.

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