Beaver Creek

The sounds were the same forty years ago,

but we shrugged off the babbling brook,

the gurgling crick, the rushing water;

clichés that could not choke

the fluid chords.

She still has a croaking throat

of limestone boulders, which spills

low tones over a gravelly tongue.

Through lips of sand and reeds

she begins every conversation the same,

“Do you remember when…”

I sweeten my mouth with a BB-sized

teaberry—it tingles my jaw like dill—

and wait for her question to disappear

before I answer, “Yes, I do.”