Borax

The sand that blows along the bed 
of the Amargosa waves and shirrs 
and cleans as well as water. It scours 
the tatters left uneaten by birds, 

erodes the burnished dead— 
the ones who dropped, accounts unsettled, 
before they clawed their way across 
this sour, alkali Styx. 

When you descended with your mules 
below the level of the sea, 
this river only ran with heat, 
a burning wind between the banks. 

The team strained against the grade 
from mine to railhead and deadhead back. 
You blinked against the salted sting 
that slipped into your eyes. 

And when you paused to wipe your brow 
or felt a trickle down your spine, 
perhaps you stooped to watch the bones 
as they blew to dust and understood 

that every load you hauled would seep 
and tumble back, become again 
a freight of salty relics leached 
from basalt piles of congealed fire.