What the Creek Owes Nobody

The mud had gone the color of old grout,

cracked into tiles nobody laid,

and I walked out to the middle of it

the way you walk into a room

after someone's just left.

There was a soup can.

Upright. Rust-orange. No label.

Just standing in the dry bed

like it had been placed there by someone

with a point to make,

which it hadn't.

I'd been gone three years.

The creek didn't know that.

The creek didn't know anything anymore,

which is maybe the problem.

I stood with my hands loose at my sides

in heat that had no business being that specific,

thinking: I don't owe this place anything either.

Which was a lie.

The can didn't move.