“On Blood and Water” by Laura Maher 9poetry, ’14)

An excerpt from the essay, “On Blood and Water,” by Laura Maher (poetry, ’14) published at The Common:

On Blood and Water

When people speak of my city’s river, they say: declined. What they mean is: dry. Only modern cities can survive on the promise of water. Early people settled just east of the river, on the then-fertile floodplain that offered easy access to water, mud, fish, grasses, all the necessary components to forge a life in the desert. In the summer, I imagine cool breezes.

Tucson lies in a valley between four mountain ranges, so each range becomes a landmark. A trained eye can decipher a way through the desert using these mountains alone, though this eye will also see the lines of cottonwood trees, will find where water runs silently underground—the Santa Cruz River (translation: “Holy Cross”) long buried under a bed of pummeled stone, sand, bits of mica.

In this valley, a trained ear can distinguish predator calls: a wolf from a coyote, for instance.

The news is a gray wolf has been spotted at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, the first found in Arizona in seventy years. She is alone, but scientists are hoping she is pregnant. What they can be sure of is that it seems miraculous, this appearance of her after so long. It is long work to replace what was erased once before. […continue reading here]