Nathan Ruyle
Red
After several months
Of relentless, hot bake,
The Creek, as we called it,
(though it was a slough
born of backwater and rain)
Crept away from its banks;
Receding into thick puddles--
One to the east,
One to the west.
Openly deify the sun
I buried black, rubber veins and
Jerked the orange well-pump open
Every morning and night;
Clicking it closed
Only after a snaking, dark stain
Appeared under the peppers
Tomotoes and eggplant.
On a Sunday morning,
After the garden had its drink,
I descended into the creek bed,
With the dry clay cracking underfoot,
To find those churning pots--
A putrid, brown stew
Already at a rolling boil
In the early heat.
All the life found
In that stagnant 1/4 mile
Of land-locked water
Was compressed there;
The large and the small
Wallowing in the last
With the sun dancing silver
On the shine of their scales
As it swallowed their world.
Weeks later the sun did relent.
Cloud brought a desperate delouse
That quenched, filled, and overflowed;
But the flies had long picked
The fish combs clean,
Half cemented in the cracked clay,
And the tomatoes hung limp on their vines--
Having drunk too much,
They split their smooth skin,
Leaving red stains on the earth below.