The game of chance, taker and giver,
began with the Colorado River.
It built a delta with a drift
so that the mighty flow could shift
and sometimes fill an ancient drink
now known as the Salton Sink.
Millennia later, men with plans
found fertile silt under desert sands
and called the valley Imperial,
intending to irrigate it well.
Their canal could not abide
the rain-stoked torrent of 1905.
For sixteen months, all out of joint,
the river filled that lowest point
and the Salton Sink became a sea—
a monster never meant to be.