Hard Water

Dec 20 2011

My water well is going on 30.

The steel pipe, still holding

straight down

into fractured rock.

Where the temperature

is constant,

darkness

absolute.

It is topped by a steel cap

that long lost its lustre,

now a rusted earthen dun.

Lifted off, I peer down to bedrock,

letting sun

come flooding in.

Where light

is unnatural, alien,

perhaps awakening

the bowels of the earth,

dormant
for a million years.

Hard water, inky black

seeping into the shaft.

How long

since it went underground?

Since it was warmed by sun,

gave life

or drowned it?

The well has been bad;

silt, perhaps

a shift in the strata,

tilted, compressed

collapsed.

Up it comes

tasting cold, metallic,

water that fell from the sky

some summer long past.

All this time

in the lifeless airless depths,

sweet water

waiting to quench me.

Then spread into vessels, capillaries, cells,

like a river

churning through its delta.

Branching out,

sinking

into the rich alluvial soil

of my flesh.