summer rains

the summer rains never came,
the river lay languid beside the trail,
dried up and discarded,
like the rotting deer off in the woods,
antlers pointing heavenward,
as the hide slowly falls away,
a little bit more each and every day,
felled by the hand of fate,
after dodging arrows and bullets,
trains, trucks and cars,
only to collapse in cool solitude,
I stop on the bridge to stare at the river,
reduced to a stream under the wood slats,
trash piles at the bend off to my left,
old tires, a chair, part of a mattress,
the detritus of a university town,
as runners and bikers pound past,
the bridge echoing their footfalls to the treetops,
and I roll away in relative silence,
everyone plugging away the world with their Ipods,
just a nod or a glance my way but not a word,
as I roll under railroad trestles,
then finally squeeze beneath the highway,
twenty-five foot concrete pylons holding traffic aloft,
semis and commuters rushing by without a second look,
I ride past the sewage treatment plant,
the smell of rotting something fills the air,
as a fisherman pulls a sickly red salmon to shore,
the water a little bit deeper thanks to the plant,
water bubbling out of an underwater pipe,
just as I catch up with the women’s basketball team,
all wearing matching tops and bottoms,
some towering over me as I slip past,
the six-foot-nine center looks bigger in person,
her sculpted legs glistening with sweat,
the picture of physical perfection,
in an otherwise barren landscape.