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Ascent
Along the edge of our pond is a small platform that extends out over water. At its base is attached a floodlight mere inches above water level so that at night a beam directed to the opposite shore grazes the pond’s surface. Light shines across still water that was warmed by daytime’s hot sun but that now, in darkness, is blanketed by cool and heavy night air. A silent white mist, diaphanous and phantom-like, slides over the glassy plane. The ghostly vapor careens across slick liquid, for a time in one direction, then in another, in response to causes I can neither see nor feel. It swirls and spikes and gathers itself into chimerical amorphous plumes. And it rises, disappearing into empty darkness above.
Our pond ascends to sky.
by Robert McGowan
Read by Beth Adams — Download the MP3
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Baptism
A young man stares into the sun,
seizes air through his mouth
like one who’s been under water too long,
lungs filling with the deep scents
of mud and summer grasses.
He steps out of his sandals,
strips off his shirt and shorts,
and slips into the shallow creek,
hips wedged on the rocky bottom,
body prone as a makeshift raft.
Cold water bristles over and under
his limbs; his pale torso
bobs like a thin pink float.
The eyes of the world retreat
as hate sloughs away like dead skin.
All that is left is blue sky,
warm sun, cool water,
and a rhythmic trickle
that matches beat for beat
the drumming of a buoyant heart.
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Walking on Water
Ripples slosh over your ankles, trying
to wash you up, say what can’t be done.
Those who love you do not want you
to take such risks. They are wrong.
There is no reason the color of water
cannot be the same as a skyway.
Do not be distracted if your image
drops below the surface. It is not you.
It is a shadow. Forget all the sounds
that have brought you here and now
leave. You have given up everything —
the ground under your feet. It is not
to be found now beneath this body
of water. Each day imagine yourself new.
Take one step before another, expect
dust to accumulate underfoot again,
slowly. Let whatever wants to be green
grow beneath you. Sometime in your life,
you may begin to walk with a pause,
but there is no reason to fall,
until you come to the end of your river.
by Paul Dickey
Transformer
I used to think you’re solid,
as I’m: like petals that
speak to the colourblind, or the ice
refusing to melt under the fatherly sun.
But I see you can be
the mucus on a toad,
or the flakes on a skating
ground, to be incised by
silvery blades. You give the Octobering
touch, or you’re the touch in October.
I see your desire evaporate.
Passing,
falling petals on a running river,
which delivers lovers.
Solid is about solidarity.
This is the first time I learn from
water and feel sorry for ice.
by Nicholas YB Wong
Read by Roger Phang — Download the MP3
Cascade
“The Cascade,” Amisfield, East Lothian
(Click on image to view at larger size.)
by Anna Dickie
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Looking Beyond
A rook flies
over sand banks,
over us parked
by a sea of gorse.
Across the Holy Loch a church
is wedged between trees.
The hills behind are a downy haze
of birch, the mountains glazed
with snow. The sky
drips with clouds blown
beyond the reach of wing tips.
We drive deep into the neck of hills.
Ripples travel fast across
the loch, faster than the cormorant
swooping past the crannog.
Lost in the slopes and trees,
lost in the saltless loch,
you turn to me
and for a moment,
as in the puddle beneath
the gorse, I see
an image of me
in the water blossom
of your eyes.
by Marion McCready
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Rainy Season
Malawi 1991
Strange
how the water so often failed
in the rains
we rushed out in swimsuits
to shower in the deluge
laughing as we shared soap and shampoo
our simmering enmity
almost forgotten
water flowed in rivulets
down our breasts and thighs
the warm scent of rain drenched soil
the fish eagle’s cry.
Read by Beth Adams — Download the MP3
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Restrictions
The lawn is lemon-yellow, a knee of the house,
not scraped but sunburnt, tight. No words can
recall its Florida winter, those choices between
cold and wet. I don’t care if I get fined, my
mother says, and puts her finger to the mouth of
the hose to fan the hot water over her collection
of spider plants.
At night I can hear the crickets watching me,
posed weightless on the leaves. They do not
breathe, nor do I, nor do we sleep. The back yard
holds its breath, silent, not hot, but dark.
The brass rim of the hose burns my thigh, leaves
a pink welt, like a kiss. I want to hold it over my
head and let it flow down my neck, down my
shirt, but I am afraid. I feel the hose stiffen. With
just one squeeze from my hand, it would burst.
The umbrella tree loses its leaves first, the yard
is littered with its beached canoes. Then the
palms. My mother pulls the oranged fronds from
the crowded trunk, her brown shoulders growing
large and square. I don’t know how much longer
I can take this, she says, drinking from the hose,
which she’s left running all morning, the water
pooling around her ankles.
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qarrtsiluni 