Sweetwater Swamp

Sometimes
when the muck and savagery
of our politics
get to be too much for me

I drive to Sweetwater Swamp
sometimes called
the Sweetwater Wetlands
probably because it is where
sewer water is puddled into ponds
where every nutrient known
sings siren songs
to passing birds,
paddling turtles and
sedentary reeds and trees.

The Southwest
has learned to love the phrase,
"Streams in the desert"
from Isaiah 35:6
or as Our Rumpled Leader might say,
". . . Thirty-five Colon Six".

"Sweetwater Wetlands"
is to wetlands what
a stream is to a desert:
an odd thing, appreciated.

The ponds,
some of them green
with life, and some
gravel bare to enhance
percolation
are recollections

like the "Hundred Years Ago"
photos in local newspapers
reminding us that once
water came here unpumped

and stayed, as it could
'til earth and sky
sucked it dry

without pipelines
made from American steel.

But that is why

I come here sometimes

to Sweetwater Swamp

and am reminded of

our politics.

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