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tracking in sand
ants scale the dunes

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Base camp, Drum Mountains, Utah.

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Coming in for a landing, Pahvant Butte, Utah.

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we drive on
though the last abandoned farm
lies days behind us
the last leafless mesquite
the last gray cactus
dim memories
but the road goes on
cartop solar misses the sun
reactor power only now
and in the distance
something grows larger yet

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only bitter water
from these mountains runs
lizard on a rock

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brine time

The sun bakes the collectors,

Feeding the high-rises to the south.

Trickle-down electronics feed the locals power too,

Bleeding a few watts to each plastic shanty.

Living on brine shrimp

mutated to catfish size

(when we say jumbo we mean it)

And halophytic vegetation,

The power's used to run lights and pump brine

for a little passive cooling.

At certain times and tides,

The shrimp boil purple, green, and gold,

Explode upon our minds,

Affect our vision heart and soul.

I see cities trees and countryside,

Gargantuan groves of plastic gone

That now the sun imbibe, and hide,

And strangler fig-like cables bulge on every one.

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A poem from about 15 years ago...

Year Three of the Drought

Outside my window,

forked water courses splay across the plains

like the spoor of giant birds.

The tree-toed trails are stalking big game:

maybe the Snake River

is their prey,

or the shrunken farm ponds,

fallen on desiccated times,

forgotten spawn of a dead aquarian god.

A diminished reservoir sprawls,

gator-like, in the sandy wallow,

its delta tail submerged in emerald grass

in this, the third year of the drought.

Our Lord has breathed his fiery breath into the sky—

The sacrifices begged to be spared—their hot young wine

watered our dusty throats in challenge

to the rain that does not come.

Farther west,

the lakes wear hot halos of yellow sand,

trees don’t line the watercourses here:

only sand where cacti cannot grow.

Roads coil, sidewindery,

through fields of desolation.

Each town huddles around its dam,

its lake, its theft from downstream neighbors.

Misers of water—drink deep,

the collector is coming.

Mud women settled here,

built schools and theatres,

now the land bares its bones to the sky,

and small creatures hide from the sun.

Nested lines of dusty olive

are shorelines of a subterranean kind,

the aquifers are sinking out of mind,

leaving behind the mummies of springs.

Once, we stood and could not see the distant shore.

Now, withered grasses shake their fingers at the sun.

Weeds tumble in this,

the third year of the drought.

First published: Mythic Delirium 5, 2001; reprinted in Brushfires: http://store.albanlake.com/product/brushfires-by-david-c-kopaska-merkel/

I was flying across the arid SW US, and saw the most beautiful landscape out the window. I scribbled the first draft in a notebook in the sky.

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Salt pan snail trails

end with peripatetic stones

just to mess with them

we put them back where they started.

It's hot; we're going back to air-conditioning.

Now how do we get out of this valley?

The stone trails are real....