by Julia Griffin

“The Dead Sea is dying.”
—NPR

The Dead Sea’s dying. It’s a time for Donne:
The water dwindling while the world forgot,
Death, thou shalt die—the process has begun
That ends in stillness, like the wife of Lot.
How anyway is such a sea to live?
This barren paradox is all our fault:
What now consumes should be preservative;
One day these seabed pedestals of salt
Will drink the final drop. We don’t know when;
But death once dead, there’s no more Dead Sea then.