#b#To view this poem’s original formatting, please see page 37 of the online PDF of this issue: https://www.princetoninfo.com/files/library/pdfs/97.pdf#/b#
Next to the stream,
iron bars cross the open
well shaft and shadow
thin and thinner down
its brick walls.
At the bottom,
sunlight has found
watercress, the color
of coiled moss.
From the woodland stream
that twists around rims
of hills, she pulls watercress.
It leaves a peppery tang
on her tongue; perhaps
its essence will rest in
her mouth to relish all day.
Who will pick the watercress
at the bottom of the well,
savor its flavor when the light
dims in an evening room
where an empty rocker moves
as if someone had just left,
and a fireplace embers
out the heat of before?
Shuttered windows drop
the dark and embers
shadow walls as still
as a feather in shale.
Shawled and capped,
(some would say
she was too young
for that), she seeks
God in oaks, rocks
and a pouring of water.
The rocking chair is still,
the embers have forgotten
their purpose, and the water-
cress nestles and nestles
beneath iron-crossed bars
that shadow thin and thinner
down the well wall’s brick.
Stillness tempts the writer
in her. Like a hermit crab,
she drags her borrowed
shell of words to the stream
and watches watercress
master the way the earth
moves, its tectonics.
Kane is the 2006 Bucks County poet laureate whose work has been published in The River Stirring, The Bucks County Writer, U.S. 1 Worksheets, Wordgathering, Schuykill Valley Journal, Hot Metal Press, the Delaware Valley Poets Anthology, The Meadowland Review, two Philadelphia Inglis House anthologies, and others. She lives in Yardley, PA, with her husband, Stephen Millner, an artist.
