Woman at the Well

                            After that last exchange, beauty

                            slipped from my grinning,

                            slipped from my strong right hand,

                            slipped from cold gray clouds

                            the way hard-colored rain slips into

                            deeply pondered ground.  Even then we

                            could clearly see that only certain trees

                            are made to ooze with roots and mercy.

                            A cowering cloud

                            (once loomed above the ocean)

                            now bends her sweet lungs low

                            now hums into fleshy ears

                            now rolls beneath our fancy shoes

                            and pelts our flimsy preacher faces

                            with the salty exhalation

                            of an entire ocean's blather.

                            Before all of this, a beautiful acorn

                            (now forgotten) tottered and spun

                            on a shallow surge of foam,

                            blinked and bubbled toward

                            the great black shore, then rolled back

                            with hapless ease until the next wave came

                            to erase all trails and visions

                            of where it once began to

                            drown in its own flame.

                            We should have held a little longer

                            to those intermittent waves

                            the opportunities for silence

                            the rhythms we found.  We should have

                            kept them in a clear glass jar

                            within the city's open gates

                            until our own pale hands could unfold like windows

                            to show the secrets we had made, secrets

                            that keep us pointed toward

                            the water I have always known

                            and will always carry.