River Elegy

A gnarled cottonwood stands sentry

at the head of Dirty Devil ravine.

It's huddled brethren, slightly healthier,

cling close to the pathetic creek,

an earth-toned trickle skipping

through sandstone toward Glen Canyon

and the captured Colorado.

The maps call it Lake Powell now,

ill-fitting tribute to Major John Wesley,

or anyone who could love this barren land

that offers comfort only in solitude.

The mighty force that dug the Grand Canyon,

reduced to a playground, flattened

out and blanded to a sickly green,

has been wiped from the red face of the Southwest.

No drop will reach the ocean, diverted

to spew from plastic rattlesnakes, sunning

on incongruous green patches in suburbs

from Los Angeles to Phoenix.

Heaven's river, holy and enchanted,

has only ashes in its mouth.

No molecule scraped from Utah's sandy cliffs

completes the long slide to the Sea of Cortes,

where a mother oyster waits, and Steinbeck's

divers mill about, smoking and drinking tequila.

Instead the lake stagnates; the silt descends,

slowly choking the drowned cottonwoods

that had offered their meager shade to Powell's camps.

Branches still stretch from their muddy deathbed,

reaching for sun they'll never know again.