To my city in a coma along the Colorado

Photo by Tomek Baginski on Unsplash

Down where the rocks end in green water,
and the dusty paths finally terminate, the river
washes away
sticks and bird droppings,
half of it is a lake, hemmed in by a dam,
and the other half is a dying creek, towered over
by high bluffs and the airport

There, on a certain Thursday the waters were
brown and overflowing onto the grass, tickling
almost sensually the bottoms of the bat-filled bridges,
like it flooded the city eighty years ago and now
every few years

The dams, the paths, the asphalt,
it all destroyed the forests of mesquite,
leaving dust and canoe-rental shacks
and long, dipping roads that hover
over the three-eyed fish

But now, the sidewalks are less worn,
squirrels can recover from their exhaust amnesia
and remember where they hid their nuts,
the fish gradually lose their third deformed eye,
and the malodorous water is no longer quite as filthy

Now, the roads above the dams are silent,
no one crawls along the tree roots of the wooded isle,
fog at night is unchallenged over the playground

And there, over beyond the empty interstate,
a turtle stares up at the one man still
riding the metrobus, plotting revolution
like water sweeping over a dam

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