Boats in Tulare Lake

In southern San Joaquin Valley,

the extinct, freshwater Tulare Lake, 

a huge and docile sheet of water

spread over 800 square miles.

A blue sea of huge bounty,

rainbow trout, perch, pike and carp,

salmon and sturgeon.

The famed Tulare Lake Terrapin,

main ingredient for turtle soup 

served in fancy restaurants 

in San Francisco.

Egg of duck, a delicacy 

in the finer hotels

up and down the Barbary Coast.

Demand called for big boats

to sail the lake, 

snaring fish by the thousands.

The Alta, Water Witch, 

the Mose Andross, and Alcatraz, 

with great masts 

and steam-powered engines

plowed choppy waters

left trails of black smoke.

The blue horizon turned black,

clamor became a roar 

from cries, and beating wings;

Canadian geese, mallards, 

swans, pelicans, cranes, curlews, 

native and migrating birds

taken to the sky over the lake.

Dry years, with little rain 

or snowfall high above

in the eastern mountains,

the lake was a mosquito swamp.

The banks, a salt-grass desert,

a realm of the giant condor,

and ungodly dragonfly.

The dry ground was marked

by gopher catacombs, 

and kangaroo rat trails.

A hard wind blew in

from the northwest

through the tule reeds

churning little lake water, 

pushing the vanishing sea

across dry savannah.

Farmers cultivated cotton, 

altered the natural course

of three great rivers,

in place of the inland lake.

For years, the rotting hulk

of the landlocked steamer, 

the Alta, sat in a canal 

alongside State Highway 41, 

near the ancient shore.

About the poet

Stephen Barile is an award-winning poet and Pushcart Prize nominee from Fresno, California. He attended public schools, Fresno City College, Fresno Pacific University, and California State University, Fresno. His poems have been anthologized and published in numerous journals, both print and on-line. He taught writing at Madera College and at California State University, Fresno.