Diviner
April 17 2015


In his plaid shirt
and mud-caked boots
the water diviner
doesn't look like a man
in touch with the mystic.

Even you can do this
he assures me.
Feel yourself flow, like-to-like

into the earth.

As all water seeks its level,

journeying down

as far as it goes.

His eyes slit.

He mutters, spits.
And the forked wand
goes taut as a wishbone
about to break,
hands trembling

directly down.
The dousing rod

has bulls-eyed its gusher,

tapping the earth

like a diamond-tipped drill.

In a more pious age
would he have been burned at the stake,
for witching water

Godless ways?
While nowadays

when the miraculous has become mundane

we take for granted his arcane skill.

Perhaps, it doesn't seem so fantastic
when all our technology
is a black box
and just as magical.

So I take his place,
trying to quiet
my chattering mind.
When something cold
runs up my spine
from the subterranean depths.

From cisterns, dense with brine.

Dark caverns,

walls dripping

into thick mineral lakes.

And fractured seams
where streams converge, and rivers rush

sweet enough to drink.

Water black as rock,

tasting of rust
and rain washed soil.

Not divine
in some exalted place, far above.

But a pagan god
in touch with the earth.

Until it seems absurd
witching water
with a willow stick.
How could it possibly work
I scoff,
suddenly dry
as desert dust.


I ran out of water. It could have been worse: turned out to be the pump, not a dry well. Drilling is not only extremely expensive, it's hit and miss: a few feet this way, and you hit a thick artesian seam; off a bit the other, and there is only rock. The well guys told me that they still use a water diviner. And I'd happily use one too.

I recalled that when we put in a well years and years ago, my father discovered he had the gift, and took great pride in his apparent ability to witch water. I wonder if I could. Or could anyone, if he tried hard enough to empty his mind, suspend disbelief, get in touch with the earth?

Part of this poem is about just that: the power of belief. As soon as the narrator doubts, as soon as he disconnects himself from the mystical and unexplained, the power leaves him. (And let me be the first to point out how flagrantly I broke one of my cardinal rules of poetry here. Unfortunately, I couldn't keep suddenly out of that penultimate line. I tried "going" dry/ as desert dust, but it just didn't seem strong enough.) Anyway, as the poem says, all our technology is -- to the vast majority of us -- as magical as any superstitious belief. We take for granted so many utterly amazing things (not to mention the basics!) that accepting the diviner's gift -- supernatural, or not -- hardly seems a stretch.

My favourite part of the poem is this: where streams converge, and rivers rush/ sweet enough to drink./ Water black as rock,/ tasting of rust/ and rain washed soil. I especially like the relief implied by sweet water and rain washed, so soon after the brine and that thick mineral stuff.

The poem began when I a movie ad in the paper caught my eye: a new release (although when you read this, probably old and forgotten) called something like The Water Diviner. I think I've previously written a piece on the same theme, but the title grabbed me immediately, and I wanted another go at it. This obviously had something to do with my recent brush with the well guys. But I think more important is the appealing grandiloquence of that term, water diviner, which hints at something religious, or at least deeply mystical; and at him as some sort of elevated being (and which is why the opening works so well for me). And also the delicious mischief of its synonym, the water witcher, which couldn't be anything but wickedly magical. Why there is a 3rd term -- dousing -- I have no idea. While the word implies wetness -- which makes me think the douser is a good man to call! -- it hardly equals the resonance of the other two.