Observations and Insights
on the Nature of Things
This monthly column features brief essays, poems, poetic micro essays and photography by Eve West Bessier, Poet Laureate Emerita of Silver City and Grant County, New Mexico. Look for a new post every first Friday.
Freshwater – Past – Continuity
There’s a freshwater lake
beneath
White Sands National Park.
Or perhaps,
it is ancient saline water
from the Cretaceous Era
when a sea flowed
into and created this basin.
There is continuity
from the prehistoric.
I have taken
three-hundred photos
from a plastic bin
containing random
Kodak packets
and placed the images
in chronological order
into a big red
orange album.
Sunrise.
Sunset.
Multiplied by
ten-thousand.
I can now see
that there is continuity
in my own flowing
from past stories
to present realities.
Freshwater
salinated
by generous tears.
A basin filled
with a myriad
memories flowing
hot and cold.
The good
and the sad
combined.
My own
subterranean
reservoir.
My own
anthropological
diary.
Photo credit: “Beneath the Surface,” Eve West Bessier, 2025
