Jawbone Siphon Song
“There it is. Take it.” William Mulholland
Bart drove Sarah up Three Ninety Five
then North away from the two lane blacktop
on the unmarked graded road
to where steel pipe as wide as an automobile
bends up eight hundred fifty feet
a giant “V” carved on canyon walls
They stood on the warm steel in the sun
and felt the heat work into their shoes
felt the vibrations under their feet
and heard the Jawbone Canyon Siphon’s
hum almost inaudible above
the desert sounds and silences.
Bart talked cubic feet per second
incompressible fluid and the pressure
of a column of water towering high
and Sarah listened but listened too
to the song from inside the arched metal tube
as the water raced passed hoop joints and rivets
echoes of flowers in
and trickles from glaciers nestled in
the granite slopes of the Palisades
she heard the scratchy resonance
of dried out fields sold-out farms
and the whisper of men at the spillway gates
and a mantra of names
Eaton Mulholland Lippincott
Otis
a chant repeated by the wind
as it picked up the salt and sand
from the dry brown bed of Owens lake
to twirl across the empty flats
and sift through the shells of windows and doors
in the broken-down sheds of Olancha
Copyright © Frank Kearns 2014
