Contagion that I am I arrive at so many landings
In this world and there I skip rocks, as if
Parent to some child   Loch Ness, with only
Three hours of moonlight, never really ever gets dark

Mead, with its old, railroad trails, never really ever
Stays quiet, the steam and gas locomotives still
Hiss as if they’re remembered   the shores rip tides
Louder than humans, and everyone talks about its ring

Tuttle Creek, man-made place, reservoir and holder
Of Pangaean pieces, five formations of Earth’s past and
Shale as if they all happened yesterday, as if there is no
Reason to worry because they haven’t yet eroded

Clinton, with its flooded towns, graves, trees
Sanctioned with so many others to keep waters
At bay and fewer would be in danger
Downstream in the watershed, nearer to any others

There are more, of course:  ponds, puddles, wastewaters
Now they’d test positive for my presence and biome
Perhaps only the sick ones
The others ripe with antibodies

Brett Salsbury, originally from the Flint Hills of Kansas, currently resides in downtown Las Vegas, Nevada. His chapbook, Surrender Dorothy, was awarded the Poetry of the Plains & Prairies (POPP) Award through North Dakota State University Press and was published in 2022. Additional work has appeared in The New Territory, Fatal Flaw Literary Magazine, and the Concrete Desert Review, with more work forthcoming from Nervous Ghost Press and the Evening Street Review. He received his MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.