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| FOUR NO MORE DEATHS VOLUNTEERS FOUND GUILTY FOR PROVIDING LIFE-SAVING HUMANITARIAN AID ON “TRAIL OF DEATH” IN ARIZONA DESERT —No More Deaths, January 18, 2019 |
I.
What do most of us know of it?
Safe in our homes, cars, streets, sidewalks.
Plastic water bottles piled up,
filling the bellies of sperm whales.
We are half filled with liquids. Yet,
when water vanishes in an
eye blink, thirst is just death’s first sign.
A face reddens. A tongue swells. Limbs
cool, cramp. A brain aches. Eyes sink,
as if they might find liquids still
sloshing about under shrinking skin.
Deluge dreams become delusions.
II.
An Arizona desert turns crime scene.
Not because bodies of immigrants
lie scattered about, bone-thin hands
still clutching their rosaries,
but because someone has placed jugs
of water, cans of beans along
a ragged trail hoping to stave
off more gruesome deaths.
Four women may spend prison time
for desecration of a refuge.
Their water cans ran afoul of
the pristine nature of the place.
III.
Perhaps bodies gathering dust
along an arroyo where final
prayers for salvation once formed
do not amount to misdemeanors.
As dying travelers shed hats,
shirts, backpacks, photographs, sandals,
rangers scooped up remnants of lost
lives like so much tourist trash.
There is no one left to pay fines
for property abandonment
except earnest water bearers.
Our thirst for punishment wins out.
Mary K O'Melveny is a recently retired labor rights attorney who lives in Washington DC and Woodstock NY. Her work has appeared in various print and on-line journals. Her first poetry chapbook A Woman of a Certain Age is available from Finishing Line Press.