Trickle

The vivacity of the blue stream cutting through the red clay soil and brash beige rocks is enticing. It's cool and alive in a thousand ways, and as I sit and stare out over it, I feel like taking a dive. 

It's elegant the way it curves gracefully, faint from a far but alive, alive when I'm so near. It's beautiful; like a washed blue turned aqua. 

I feel like letting the blue flow over me, feel like being submerged in ice. I feel like disrupting this old and tired desert plain; I feel like being selfish and painstaking. 

The stream is so brash against the dullness of the flat. I can see it's power and feel it's momentum. I know that if I were to will this stream away it would be the end of this sad and lonely desert. This stream is the only reason there is life. 

And it's so tempting; to end it's flow. For nobody really ventures into the desert for good reason. All the plants have died, all the people moved away. All the life that once sparkled in the coffee colored stones is gone now. 

I feel as though to put this desert out of it's misery would be to save it. 

But then I think about how much this little stream means to the desert. It hasn't given up trying to make this desert habitable. It's the one and only lifeblood left, and it stills flows because that's what it's designed to do. It flows together with the glowing red clay and the beaten and bruised tawny rocks, never faltering and never giving up. 

And I think we could learn, from the little stream that runs down the desert, into the palm of the valley. 

It's keeping the desert and me alive for a reason. 

And to alter it's quiet and profound beauty would be an injustice to all who feel like I.