100 Year Flood

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 lead 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