qarrtsiluni

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by Jonathan Sa’adah

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the seasonal stream
dividing our near pasture
from the back field
where I make my best
late June hay has swollen
this January—its white
slashing teeth threaten
to take out the culvert bridge
already its rushing shoulders
massive as a running back’s
erode the banks, undercut
roots of wild cherry and plum,
whip blackberry vines
like witch’s hair in the flow

by Ed Higgins

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The Quabbin rises as if bound to speak:
the four lost towns, Dana, Enfield,
Greenwich, and Prescott murmuring
of all that was, before the emptied
graves and cellar holes took on
the impersonal and public face of history.
Where now the bass patrol and deer
nose out the fattest berries, old rumors
and a persistent watching from behind.

Were the windows open when water
swept those barns and fields? Perhaps
a table set for tea and cake spun slowly
to the ceiling, flowers spilling
from their vase, family photographs
undeveloping to slicks of sepia
within the darkening, generic pool.

I can still see the steeple
dimpling the surface. Whole towns
caught, like a breath, beneath its
phantom shadow, as in a small
glass dome where no snow falls.

by Robbi Nester

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The summer I turned six,
The Mississippi
Flooded our farm,
Following us to the second
Story. The third night
We got out by boat,
Oaring off in a slant

Of rain, leaving the car,
The burley crop, the chickens,
The family Bible,
And the house like a girl
Waist-high in water,
White skirts wavering
On its surface.

The neighbors on King’s Hill
Had coffee and quilts, holding
Them out like hands. Inside,
There was a fire, feather
Pillows; the cat had her kittens.
Their mewling soprano
Sang me to sleep. And later,

In fever, I dreamed
The dream I still have
When it rains: a country
Of sand, drought; camels;
Children, the tender swelling
Of their bones; small streams
Struggling into current.

by Pamela Johnson Parker

Read by Beth Adams — Download the MP3

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by Lucy Morris

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Water
becomes the shape of its vessel
bowled or curling round rocks.
What’s seen softens
as it slides down window panes.
It fogs a field with beaded shawls turning
grass blades into bawdy surprises,
bursts forth around a turn in the road
as a lake, a vast plain sparkling
splashing over since childhood.

by Wanda McCollar

Read by Beth Adams — Download the MP3

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Nothing in the taps but a choke of air,
cracks opening in our skin,
the pond shrunk to a dull bull’s-eye
in a basin of mud, grass
shrivelled to bones and string.

In the night,
thrumming on slate, pooling in gaps,
hissing in gutters, slapping on stone,
whooshing down drains,
at last it comes.

As if a master-switch were thrown
the lights go on,
heads bob at panes like dark balloons,

then people flood into the streets
to splash and stamp and roll
in wet.

On the pavements
piles of night-clothes

rise

like river banks.

by Gill McEvoy

Read by Dave Bonta — Download the MP3

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No larger than a tiddly wink
it would leave only a mist,
land empty in a small cup.
Still, it claims our attention.
One winter a neighbor boy drowned
under the shrunken flat white disk;
often summers when nightfall
renders the sky all colors,
mirrors two worlds from one,
sun running over
I can still hear his mother say
she lives by that light.

by Diane Kendig

Read by Beth Adams — Download the MP3

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by Heather Dearmon

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The pond stretches
into a Great Lake,
the safe area marked

by bright red floats
strung on yellow rope.
He wades until the water

reaches his waist,
stretches as the teacher
instructs, arms straight

past his head,
straight back,
face in the water.

Here his skin from head
to toe meets the world
and there is water

at the surface, water beneath
the surface, water
underwater going on

forever. He could sink
all the way to China,
not have to dig after all.

If he drowns he rises back
to the light. Everyone
applauds his dead man’s float.

by Michael Milligan

Read by Dave Bonta — Download the MP3

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