"So you are saying that prose never tells of impression or uses metaphor
in a new way?
Is that your definition of poetry?
Then "War and Peace" is poetry... "Winter in the Blood" is poetry... and
many respected sonnets are not.
What is your standard? What list of criteria do you use when you measure
a piece to determine whether it is poetry?
That isn't a trick question... I am truly interested in your baseline"

No, I said, or at least I hope I implied,  that a given subject must be
dealt with
in a way that prose cannot.   That prose would not be able to say it as
effectively,
or as completely expressive of what the poet means.   Sally's piece is
prose.  That does not make it bad, or less effective in its purpose.   It
uses words to give us a picture, just as poetry does,  without metaphor
(yes I suppose the suggestion of a possible mirage might be conceived as
metaphor...to a point)...and certainly does not "suggest" or "show" us
anything that could not be described in a travel piece, or perhaps an ad for
a safari.    It is a recitation of facts and a musing about them at the
close,  not attached particularly well...but that is beside the point.   I
have already said metaphor is nearly lacking, there is no metonomy,
synecdoche, internal or external rhyme,  rhythm, or any of a number of other
devices that poets use.   No poem MUST have these devices,  but most do.
Had Sally written this from the perspective of impression on the part of the
observer, and what this experience did to her,  what it taught her, or how
it changed her,  that would have gone a long way toward making it a poem.
It is, quite basically........prose.