Diversion Dam

Redding, California      
c. 1970 
 

The irrigation ditch was boundary line:

our side an ill-kept orchard

giving fruit in random years

when trees were in the mood--

Morning was for chores like chopping a trench

to the dry garden planted with good intent:

 

     this year we would weed—

     we would have a harvest—

     we would tend—
 

I engineered the water flow,

white string tied to sticks like a small ski lift

minus all the snow—

marked then cut the dry run
while county crews sank panels

routing water from the Sacramento

to canals that in those days said

Redding was a rodeo town,

racing horses on hard packed banks

dry in winter, cutting through yards,

crossing neighborhoods sprung
where new kids weren’t allowed to play
since they might fall in open water.
We caught the new kids looking,

hazed in dust our horses raised,

hooves in time not caring how fast we rode—

our horses knew how not to crash.

If you fell, and it hurt, you got back on.

 

It took a hammer, every year, to knock the valve.

You heard metal on rusted metal,

then the wait—

for the white plume, pressed from canals

fed by the dam restored every spring,

when the Sacramento swelled with snow

off Mount Shasta and the melting Cascades.

                                                                                        April 15, 2012

                                                                                    in memory of Jack Best,

drillmaster

ACID Diversion Dam,
Sacramento River
Redding, California