Little fishies swim—Mama
said to— right over the dam,
find themselves in a flowing river.

When we sang that song, our small
hands pressed together making
S curves before the plunge,

we could not imagine water
in short supply, though the creek down
the street went dry each summer.

Shut sluices stop the river flow, yet
the reservoir does not fill. The fish are
stranded. Our hands can’t help them.

Ellen Roberts Young has two full-length collections, Made and Remade (WordTech, 2014) and Lost in the Greenwood (Atmosphere, 2020), three chapbooks with Finishing Line Press and poems in numerous print and online journals. She is an editor of Sin Fronteras/Writers Without Borders Journal.. www.ellenrobertsyoung.com