Summer is fading and the Eastern

Hognose glides across the trail on

his way to the evaporating pond for

a refreshing swim. Will fall rains tickle

the open, gaped mouth pond or quench

its thirst till it overflows and rises

along the scorched, cracked earth

seeping into crevasses and down to

where chipmunks have burrowed?

He assumes so but doesn’t know

as he watches a drop fall, land on a

rock near the pond and vanish without

a trace, not even a fading wet spot.