Mike Stone's speaker looks out over a dry riverbed in the desert and sees only emptiness. Even the pebbles seem thirsty, and the only water on offer is mirage, a false shimmer that never quenches anything. The rich golds and violets of the far mountains no longer move him. He says they belong to the sky, not to him, which makes the beauty feel shut off from his life.
The middle of the poem looks back to a time when his body responded to cold water from the rocks, to light caught in mist, and to young women. Desire and thirst seem to run together here, as if the landscape and the speaker are drying out in the same way. Now his body "speaks to nothing." All that's left is a dream of "dark and soothe," and a grim, slightly strange drink from "slow scorpions." The mood is bleak and resigned, with a quiet, weary acceptance rather than loud despair.