By Eric Meub
[Originally published on January 11, 2014]
The grasses hissed beneath the oaks that mark
these fields. But now her swimming pool has spread
a net of light up into shadowed bark.
An over-irrigated oak falls dead.
Yosemite must overflow its well.
An Eden drowns to fill the pools, to force
a pastel wash upon an arid swell
of grass. Her husband sues her for divorce.
She finds release in aqueducts. They reach
across the pictures in the travel albums she
still keeps: through Nîmes, through Merida, through each
brown book of empire branching to the sea.
And, branching through her garden hose, they soak
the poles that prop the last enduring oak.
| Copyright © 2015 by Eric Meub Eric Meub, architect, lives and practices in Pasadena. He is the adopted brother of the artist, Susan C. Price. They respect, in their different ways, the line. |  |
Hetch Hetchy is the name of a valley, a reservoir and a water system in California in the United States. The glacial Hetch Hetchy Valley lies in the northwestern part of Yosemite National Park and is drained by the Tuolumne River. For thousands of years before the arrival of Europeans in the 1850s, the valley was inhabited by Native Americans who practiced subsistence hunting-gathering. During the late 19th century, the valley was renowned for its natural beauty – often compared to that of Yosemite Valley – but also targeted for the development of water supply for irrigation and municipal interests.
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