Rio Colorado, R. I. P.

Poetry Thursday: Rivers.

A gravel ghost crawls on a desert plain
beneath the clouds that mock the thirsty earth
by dragging flags of half-condensing rain
that don't touch ground. A scorpion gives birth,
her sterile couch of sand, a riverbed
drained far upstream by thirsty giants lying
on bellies gorged with water, overfed
on blood of rivers. Downstream, drying
waterholes gape empty at the sky
like mouths of mud, toothed with the tiny bones
of migrant birds who landed on the stones
and found no water. Ugly way to die--
deep desert-stranded, far from Baja's coast,
beside a murdered river's gravel ghost.