Watercolors

The Colorado runs as red as blood
with silts eroded from the sandstone heights
and colored clays, the beds of ammonites
that swim bewildered in this saltless flood.
And Mississippi, synonym for "mud",
renowned for earth-consuming appetites,
is thick with loess and powdered dolomites
and prairie soils run where water should.

Columbia is fed a siltless flow
by streams that spring from metamorphic rocks
or waterfalls on hard basaltic blocks.
Winter or summer, freeze or thaw or snow
she's never tinted with some earthen shade.
She runs as grey as steel, as green as jade.

Collection available! Knocking from Inside