Red Clay Weather

The Shallows

—64 The Shallows Aral-denghiz, “Sea of Islands” strewn across saltwater surfaces subsiding into desiccated cotton fields: white gold shrouds Turkestan, words water left behind, sturgeon, carp, barbel, and roach mislaid, a sickness of the imagination. The Greater and the Lesser Seas have seceded, won’t communicate today, torn lake alienation machine. The Caspian diminishes to fifty years of sanded rock drinking in drought, sinking into silt -ed over beds where water loses sleep. Sediments of thirst level the Black Sea, industrial wastes and municipal sewage aggrandize the dead zone (desert of water under the oxygen tent, post-glacial kill ratios stagnant with hydrogen sulfide). Mackerel and anchovy have deserted filled-in outlines of parch: blocks of salt flat lick the wound to make it stay, waylaid by place. White petals tumble, glittering shepherd text-2.indd 64 11/22/10 2:07 PM —65 crumble of downed stars drowned in dry (masses of white fibers opening, seed-hairs): breathe in toxic dust and fertilizer residues. Uzbek Orol, a dying hole of consequence and false economies, unlined irrigation trenches, herbicide suffusion: half your former depth come up for air, half your volume shrugged shut. Due to diversion of its feeder rivers for intensive cotton and rice cultivation, by the late ’80s, the Aral Sea had lost more than half its volume and depth. The rising salt and mineral content of the lake made the water unfit for drinking and killed off the once-abundant fish on which the local population depended. Temperatures rose, rainfall fell, the water table sank, and major health problems ensued as people in the region breathed toxic dust suffused with fertilizer residue. By 1989 the Aral Sea had split in two, the “Greater Sea” in the south and the “Lesser Sea” in the north, each of which had a salinity almost triple that of the sea in the 1950s. shepherd text-2.indd 65 11/22/10 2:07 PM ...