At The River - Rancho Mirage

It's a ranch, built on mirage
it's a river, running through a shopping center
whispering its imported music
near the shores of a real river, the Whitewater,
that flows only when the mountains pound their drumsongs
down its wide white heart, and washing garbage and dead dogs
and all things forgotten, giant rocks, sometimes cars,
baby strollers and bits of laundry, old 2 x 4's
and remnants of golf course turf, some people
planted alien grass too close to its edge: thirsty mouth
with invisible teeth, gnawing in the moon's dawn,
mid-summer or winter snow-thaw, thirsty
for the swallow, they say you can't drink enough here.

You'd think that the spa would know this, that
a place for Brazilian wax and tanning, in this desert
where the sun shines 365 days per year and more,
where lying on the asphalt this time of year
is guaranteed to melt away all unwanted body hair,
that acupuncture could be experienced
in the plucking of sharp needles from the buyer's choice
of cactus needle: ocotillo, cholla, palo verde,
all indigenous plants just a short reach away,
how about massage on lizard-warm rocks,
cragging overhead just to the south, ahh,
Magnesia Falls Canyon, when I first moved here
I thought it was an exotic mercury-canyon with wings,
flowing with rare minerals and spilling down to earth
from the high reaches where only the Bighorn Sheep live.

I was wrong. The mirage reveals plastic sheep art,
colored by local artists and demonstrating what we wanted
to be real, what reminded us of something we no longer have,
but cherish, at the River, on a humid, choking late August afternoon
and the Betty Ford Center is nearby, too, maybe for the inevitable
reality check and substance abuse correction efforts, after all,
shopping for expensive spa products at Lohar Lohar near
P.F. Changs Chinese Bistro, alongside Borders Books with its
fairy tales, and Starbucks, offering cups of coffee and venti ice tea,
its logo of a fat, crowned Mermaid, smiling and spreading her legs
reminding us all that the ocean visits us every now and then,
and that our expensive mirage was once a cattle ranch,
that Betty Ford herself couldn't afford to go to rehab,
that our desert was once under water, too, inhabited by the sea

the mirage is beneath the water, after all, the river is tongue
and the cows are lowing for salt, the sheep are undone

copyright 2008 Ruth Nolan