Like the imagination itself, a poem can be a time machine, allowing the user to move freely between the present and the past—even the very distant past—and the future. 

The setting of my poem “Dry Falls” is a deep coulee, or ravine, in what is now the dry, central desert of Washington State. Between 10,000 and 15,000 years ago, when the earth’s climate was very different from what it is today, this area was repeatedly scoured by floods unlike any in our current era of relative climatic stability.