LIGHT HOUSEKEEPING

The Live Oak bundles roots
in cracks of rock where water leaks
from scoops of granite—high

Sierra lakes filled by snowmelt
thirty crooked miles or more,
and six thousand feet of gravity, away

to stay alive. A mass of tendrils
chasing a tiny stream into pipe
before the trough to drink deeply,

to swell into a rope of roots
to plug and claim the most
precious here to life until it

disappears. Everyone knows
this place beneath a string
of sycamores and cottonwoods

growing sideways for the light
in the canyon’s deep and narrow cut—
where water spills into troughs,

pools overflowing one into another
where resident thistles and weeds
compete, crawl with black ants

to feed the birds and rodents
who in turn inflate snakes
that enjoy the cool and damp.

Enough to share with cows,
I come to clean the pipes
that make the spring box work.