**Modern Life of a Striped Bass as Lake Mead Disappears

PUBLISHED IN THE AWAKENING REVIEW SPRING ISSUE 2023

***

My house, my yesterdays

have been repossessed,

the world reduced to apartment sized

by a wandering powdery white,

this white line high on the limestone cliffs

higher today

than the false hopes of rain,

my world, downsized another thirsty inch.

Nooks and crannies

I once used

now hide high in the facing rock

trapped inside those miniature worlds

is whatever life is left.

Fleeing feast I sorely need, are

bones

lying on caked cracked mud

brittle now and bleached.

I search the deeper water,

I search for longer life,

I search to quell my hunger

a phantom that chases itself.

Cold is lower, lower still

only rise when sunlight dies

circling to follow the path

that attracts

laid out by the bright moonlight.

A nibble here, a small bite there

nothing to satiate or sustain,

it won't be long

until I lie on the caked cracked mud

bleached and brittle

bones.