Water

 

The overconsumer

A lazy horizon, pink, yellow, orange

Splashed low, reaching bravely toward

Pale blue expanse above

A still column of air cooled 

The cottonwood sentinels

Keeping their roots deep in the soil

The creek has gone underground

Small trickles traveling through strata

A beastly barrier higher

On the foothills where the winter-snow gathers

Gradually melts, as the days expand

There could be lovely, abundant cascading waters

There is a beastly thief that has taken

Diverted the organic path

That enlivens the soils of the cottonwood

The widened colony of the grove is narrowed

The edges have dried as the days warmed, and

Heat saturates beyond the spring grasses, pushing

deep into the granite rocks

There should be water dancing 

Through the grove

once luscious curves of cool

Vibrant water meandering

Through the mounds and depressions

The cottonwood flourished

Drank their fill of pure hydrogen-oxygen molecules

Glorious how the soft green

Circular leaves fluttered as the water

Snaked through the meadow

Cooling, soothing, creating a heavenly wind

Traveling far into the western sky

The evaporated water refreshing 

The molecules of air above the cottonwood canopy

There is a taker, a mover, a user

An over consumer in the foothills

One that looks from high 

But sees no pink, yellow, orange

There is one with a wide view

That sees not curvaceous columns of white

With playful limbs that twist and angle toward the stratosphere

There is one with clever hands

does not smell that fragrant sap in the evening quell 

does not see the spinning

Medallions of colors through the hanging days

Twirling in the sun, rain, snow

Cottonwood reaches up with a silent message

See us, give us, send us 

The source

Quench our thirst

Enliven out driest parts

Give us back unto freshness

Bring us back into majesty

Return to us our daily drink