First the smell,
not water, just its remnants: 
mud curling at the edges, sun-rotted algae,
a hint of fish without bodies
clinging to the reeds
like stale air held too long.

Then the silence—
no current to fill the space between stones,
no birdsong, only the hawk
that circles once, decides there’s nothing to take,
and veers off toward the silos.

The banks have collapsed inward
as if the river tried to hold itself too tightly
and failed. A rusted can lies where the shallows were,
label long gone, metal warped
to resemble a mouth mid-sentence.

Yarrow blooms where minnows once scattered,
while cattails droop in arthritic arcs,
and the split quill of a heron feather
juts from the clay—
a relic the river tried to bury.  

Nothing moves but the grasshoppers,
delayed in their leap from heat-scabbed stones.
Stepping into the riverbed, the silt grips my ankles
the way memory does—slow, deliberate,
unwilling to loosen what it claims.

I kneel where the water once made its turning,
brush aside a snail shell—its spiral still intact,
and hold my breath as the dust settles below.
The sky offers no cloud, no cover—
only August, bare and brutal, 
leaving no skin unscorched.