Lake without Water
Chris Ellery
May 4, 2025
“It is significant that Mother Earth comes from the heavens above, but also generates the creative energy that arises from the darkest, deepest place. When seen as a collective dream of humanity, Earth Diver myths depict the emergence of creative energy and greater consciousness that comes from below.”
Michael Meade, “Chaos and Creation on Earth” (Living Myth Podcast #272)
The Woman who fell from Sky to Turtle’s back
found a world overwhelmed by water.
Toad dove deep to bring up a little mud in his mouth
for Woman to make an island.
My trail map claims I’m standing in a lake.
Dry grass, scrub brush, tumbleweeds, and prickly pear.
Sidewinder divots in the dirt.
Deer tracks and bobcat tracks and scat.
In the ocean of dream, I am dreaming I am living in a desert.
This waterless lake fills a hollow of an ancient ocean.
Eons after the land rose up to push back the sea,
people decided to dam the stream that flowed
through the dry seabed. They remembered a millennial flood
and cries of mothers of drowned sons and daughters.
Since the lake was made, clouds have mostly kept away.
The sky used up its thunder.
Woman was pregnant with twins when water fowl
set her like sunlight on Turtle’s back.
Her Soft son came into the world through her birth canal,
the Hard one kicked his way out through her side,
breaking her into pieces that became the vegetation.
The Soft son created the dove-tender beings of earth.
The Hard son made the monsters and called
for creatures to come who build lakes that burn.
I have come to this thirsty land in a time of war,
hiding wounds inside a longing for change.
My trail map claims I still have seven miles to walk.
The trail leads west, where the Hard brother waits.
How can Earth Diver dive in a lake with no water
and fetch up mud to make a New Earth?
I’ll tear myself in two. I’ll shove the Hard half
toward the Sun to steal a storm from Father Sky.
I’ll send what’s Soft deep down with those
that burrow in Mother Earth—Insect, Viper,
Rodent, Root—in search of River,
rushing through caverns in the darkest Ground.
O.C. Fisher Reservoir
Palm Sunday, 2025
Chris Ellery is author of six poetry collections, most recently One Like Silence and Canticles of the Body. He has received the X.J. Kennedy Award for Creative Nonfiction, the Dora and Alexander Raynes Prize for Poetry, the Betsy Colquitt Award, and the Texas Poetry Prize. He is a member of the Fulbright Alumni Association, the Texas Institute of Letters, and the Texas Association of Creative Writers.
