The Brine Flies Are Gathering Poem by Kim Barney

At the recent Utah State Poetry Society Spring Festival, one of the guest speakers, Rob Carney, who has written eight books of poetry, gave us a writing challenge. We had to write about something impossible happening. I couldn't think of anything more impossible than a hummingbird drinking all the water in the Great Salt Lake. He gave us about 15 minutes to write and then we broke up into groups of four to share what we had written. He said nothing about making it rhyme, and I wrote it as free verse at first, but when I was finished I saw that by changing only a word or two here and there, I could make it rhyme, and I could not resist.