Let There Be Light

August 6 2013


I peered down the well.
That knowing look,
as I do when popping the hood
of the steaming car
stalled on the freeway.
Hoping, if nothing else
to release the dark humours
coursing beneath
its smooth metallic skin.
Stranded
on the narrow shoulder;
a trembling eddy
in the Niagara of traffic,
blasted
by 18-wheelers
jetting past.

Here, when I bought the place.
Steel pipe, with its patina of rust
plunging straight
into chilly darkness.
Thick black cable, snaking its way
to the precisely machined
German pump.
A silver bullet
sleekly immersed
in hard black water,
the mineral smell
of airless earth
cold Precambrian rock.

The same knowing look
of a man who is good with his hands,
can fix things
knows how they work.
But everything I depend upon
is a black box,
might as well be magic
as bargaining with gods.
Davening
let there be water, ignition
light.

My ear to the pipe
I hear rushing sounds,
a subterranean river
falling and splashing and branching its way
through fractured strata
of ancient rock.

In absolute darkness
for tens of millions of years
until that well was sunk.
Broke through, in an instant,
the distant noise
of men and machines
from far above,
squinting down
that narrow opening.

A brilliant dot
of soft blue sky,
with its warm fragrance
of high summer,
the colour of light.

I'm intrigued by the idea of this utterly alien world a short distance under our feet: not only black cold and lifeless, but ancient and unchanging. (Although, of course, it changes slowly -- as everything must. And there is indeed life: extreme forms of bacteria that literally live in rock deep inside the earth.)

I'm trying to dramatically juxtapose these contrasts, render them stark: that is, our familiar airy world with this dark subterranean space, as well as the sleek machines of human creation with the rawness of nature.

And paralleling this darkness is my own ignorance: the helplessness of a man -- who isn't at all handy -- in a technological and highly specialized world. Which is where that reassuring -- if fraudulent -- "knowing look" comes in. So finding myself gazing confidently down into the depths, I thought of how I gazed just as knowingly under the hood; despite knowing nothing of either cars or pumps. Although the first stanza probably goes on too long: too soon in the poem for such a long-winded tangent. On the other hand, I'm really pleased with all the "watery" allusions I managed to come up with: which, aside from acting as a nice kind of foreshadowing, help cinch it tighter with the the rest of the piece, giving it just enough coherence to let it stand. Of course, living in the country and depending upon a well, events have forced me to acquire a certain amount of knowledge, if not skill. I lost water twice this past year or so: the old well need to be hydrofracted in the middle of cold December (big machines, and men much larger and more competent than me); and later on we had to pull a blown pump. So I got to peer down into that cold mysterious space, listen to the buried rivers rushing by in its dark impenetrable depths: a barely imagined subterranean geography in all 3 dimensions.

The final stanza flips the point of view, and the reader is left looking up through this tiny aperture of pipe, as if squinting through the small eyepiece of an old telescope: from the cold dark stillness, into "a brilliant dot/ of soft blue sky." I was really pleased with "warm fragrance": the way only 2 words can so fully capture a summer day; the power inherent in invoking the too often neglected sense of smell; and the telling contrast between it and the "hard black water", with its "mineral smell/ of airless earth/ cold Precambrian rock."

"Davening", by the way, is a real word -- despite the stern disapproval of spell-check. It's a form of Jewish prayer, associated with Orthodox worship: men standing, rocking, and muttering their own idiosyncratic version of liturgy. The sound is a kind of mumbled sing-song chant. I'm a devout atheist. But davening appeals to me. I like the implication of a personal connection to God, rather than one limited or prescribed by liturgy. And I like the controlled chaos of the Orthodox service, which seems far more authentic than everyone mouthing along with the same formulaic prayers.