DesertBlog

Hundred Year Flood - Mojave

At the end of the Mojave River,
100 miles downhill from mountain woods,
You arrive at this sere topography of white salts,
crusted devil horns, angelic duplexes
of sand dune prayers floating
across the oceanic expanse like tract-home miracles

at the end of ZZYZX Road,
named to create the word
that would be the last
in the English language dictionary
by a health food preaching, 8th grade dropout
who had three different P.O. Boxes in Baker,
one for his food-supplement business,
one for his Dr. Curtis Springer commentaries
and the other for his skid-row-exile desert resort

where the floodwaters rest their pressures
of cottonwood, pine limbs, suburban garbage
and tangled weeds delivered insanely northward,
to the bottom of a dead inland sea.

Sometimes, after spring floods from the San Bernardino Mountains
jump Silverwood Lake, squeeze through
the dam at the union of Deep Creek and the old river channel,
coursing like a vintage roller coaster car
on creaking tracks, Manifest Destiny came through here,

carrying old bits of wagon boards from Mormon settlers
who followed a page of Catholic Bible torn from Father Garces,
who led the minions out of this forsaken zone,
rough men of the wild west, who slaughtered the stray Pai-Ute
and fished for the Mojave Chub in infrequent pools,

under the bridges on Bear Valley Road, at Mojave Narrows
outracing heavy, long-winded trains,
beneath I-15 past Barstow, a surprise of heavy river
to travelers racing from Las Vegas

and then on quiet, last lap
through Afton Canyon, where the bones
of Shoshone, woolly mammoth elbows and teeth
sometimes protrude, silent wiles after you carve away
more of your work

and then your waters pause,
gather prayer-like
in one low mass,
Lake Manix was once your name,
You made the pilgrimage yet again
your life span refracting in a progression
of water to light, and making a pretty show
for the travelers heading west, backtracking
along Interstate 15
towards your snowmelt,

exhausted, below sea level now,
your devotion sinks
into miles of sand,
it’s the old, going-nowhere,
the miners and fortune-seekers who
rode the Tonopah Tidewater Railroad
make their splintered benediction to you
leave bits of gold and silver dreams,
the ruins of miner’s shacks and homesteader cabins
scattered along your shores.

c. 2008 Ruth Nolan
accepted for publication in Epicenter Magazine, issue 12, to be published winter 2008-09

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