on drawing water

On Drawing Water

When the water, drawn awfully small

                through the calcified tubes

                is nothing but rough and

                unreluctant from the town

                well, a handdug a century or more

ago reservoir up the road, a fallback

                of run-off knocks on the copper

                pipes in the ceiling

                of the basement, I’m not long

                considering all the other

knots and elbows under the tar

                and where the rest of the town

                is pulling it all up from the pond:

                Robbie, who if you watch him

                walk away he seems headless

in his curvature, a modest Quasimodo,

                listening to the whistle

                of the morning two-bag strong

                tea he steeps for his elderly

                mum, still sleeping…

the desk cop on duty, nodding off

                all this sluggish dawn, scanner

                static, Chinese dumpling farts,

                two blocks off barking dog

                (then an abrupt shut up cuff)

and in the opposite direction somewhere

                up the road a dozen or more

                wide and lowing steers

                shove their beefy

                noses into the last of last year’s

hay.  They’ll make the best

                of the day, the trough

                gone smooth by tonguing

                up the littlest bits of it, whatever

                it is.  Does the one

who draws the water for them

                the way I ask my faucet

                to draw just by opening a pipe

                just by taking it

                for granted that the pressure

is set and is precise that the knocking

                on the copper is all I need

                to know about endings

                things, just by shutting them

                off, does the farmer, soon to be

leading the first steer of the fall

                up the path to be addressed

                as savior by more than one

                mouth, how his fat flesh

                undone will, lifted from the block

and cut to the bone, make a mouth

                water, from nose to tongue,

                shut up with a gnash and a bang

                behind the lips that spoke

                salt that spoke coriander

               

that spoke nothing before water, called.