Water Ways

On how inspiration can take unlikely forms

I think this is the first poem I ever wrote. There were a couple of prose poems before this one - lyric prose? micro essays with a lilt? But this was my first attempt at a proper poem. I was working in the library at my daughter’s elementary school and it was April, National Poetry Month. I was pushing poetry on kids like a dealer of illicit substances, badgering every teacher I saw, pushing them to challenge their students to write a poem, just one, hoping it formed a lifelong habit. And I thought, “Put your money where your mouth is, girl!”

We’d just had a bit of furnace trouble, and by we I actually mean I. As was so often the case in those days, I was home alone with the kids while my husband traveled for work. I had called him for the number of our “heating guy” having found a wet, sooty mess in the basement. It ended up being not terribly serious, but the clean-up was messy and tiring, and having accomplished it solo, it had become a Herculean labor in my mind. Poem worthy, even. I thought, “A poem about a furnace repair? Really?” But the experience was fresh in my mind and I had some sense that inspiration of any sort should be treated with respect.

I’ve learned since that sometimes writing about very unpoetic things can lead to some rather terrific poetry. I don’t think anybody would tell Billy Collins to “leave off with the mice, already!” Poetry needn’t be all velvet curtains of night and sparkling droplets on spider webs. I'd rather read about Billy Collins’s Irish Spider any day (I couldn’t find that one online to link, but you can find it on page 41 of Whale Day and Other Poems. I’ll wait.)

At any rate, earlier this week I saw a repair van in the neighbor’s driveway, the name of a local heating contractor emblazoned on the side. I winced because nobody in Maine needs furnace trouble in February. But it did remind me of this poem, so I guess one good thing came from their troubles. And my dogged persistence in promoting poetry paid off with one student, at least. My daughter submitted several poems to her university’s annual poetry contest this week, asking me to do a final read-through for her before hitting send. What a glorious girl she is.

---

Water Ways

There is a gasket in the expansion tank 
on the furnace in our basement. 
I was not well acquainted with them, this gasket and tank.
We had not been introduced until this morning.

But water and I, we’ve known each other for years.
In a tall glass with ice, falling as rain on thirsty plants, it makes me smile. 
Anticipated, longed for, expected, it is a welcome relief, a happy sigh.
Water by surprise is a gasp, an Oh, no!, a change of plans. 

Water flowed once down the kitchen wall in another house,
a sound like a stream welcoming me home one January night,
like the expensive fountains you see 
in posh malls or the lobbies of high-end hotels. 

That night water came as ice dams, 
Children of the melt-freeze-melt-freeze rhythm of winter roofs,
they pry up shingles with icy fingers.
Then outside ice becomes inside water - drip, trickle, rush.

Just as water finds its way in, it also makes its way out.
Water expands when heated, 
in a whistling kettle, a stockpot with a rattling lid,
or in a furnace that ignites with a tapping and a roar.

An expansion tank is a guest room, a Murphy bed, a folding chair.
It is extra space for when something won’t fit anywhere else. 
An open door in a closed system. 
Step right this way, ma’am, plenty of room.

When there is no more room, water does not accommodate.
It doesn’t say, Don’t trouble yourself, I’ll come back another time.
Water will expand and something will give way.
And when it does, water will go free, wildly and with force.

It will spray and leak and run. 
It will stir up dark sediment on its way to the exit,
flinging black spots and smears as far as it can reach.
Then it will run and creep under anything it can, soaking up, in, down.

You walk downstairs for a hammer or a can of tomatoes,
and you find water instead, and your day becomes 
something altogether different than you’d planned.
It wears gloves and old jeans, has a wide sooty smudge on its cheek.

In this new sort of day you call a man who knows water better than you.
He can tell you what went wrong.
He will eulogize your tank that was and present you to its replacement, 
a big wide hand patting its enameled side with affection.

He’ll say, You did the right thing, flipping the switch.
Another time, this lever here will shut off the water.
Maybe put a pail, or better yet, an old milk jug 
under that pipe there, just in case.

Not that it will happen again, he says.
But it could. You never know
with tanks and gaskets and water.
Water, especially. You just never know.

Once the furnace roars to life again, he leaves.
Thanks so much, take care, take care.
You mop and sponge and carry and haul, reaching gloved hands 
where the spiders live. Necessity is the mother of bravery.

And finally, when you are done,
fans whirring over still damp spots on the floor,
You climb the stairs, both sets, to a little room
where water belongs, where it is not out of place.

You wash off the sooty smudge, 
then swirl a toe in watery suds by the drain.
You smile as you steam away the cold in your hands -
Caused by water, cured by water. In that much, we are even.

---

For those of you who might be following along with my crazy sestina idea from last week, I’ve chosen my words and typed them up in the right order on a page. I’m not as far along as I’d hoped, but I’ve made progress. How are you doing with yours? Have you thought of any particularly good/versatile words to use? Care to share?

---

What I’m Reading:

• I worked a shift at the library yesterday and in a rare quiet moment I did a little research on historical mystery series, one of my favorites for genre reading. I ordered a few to try out and brought home the second in the Somershill Manor series by S.D. Sykes. I read the first, Plague Land, a while back and enjoyed it very much. They are set in a very different England than is pictured in many mysteries you may have read. The Black Death has swept through the country, leaving a bleak world in its wake. There are not enough people to work the fields and societal change is knocking at the door. Looking forward to this one.

• Somebody here on Substack recommended Ted Kooser to me. Forgive me, I can’t remember who it was. But thank you, thank you. I’ve spent a too-busy week with Splitting an Order next to my keyboard, dipping in and out when I needed a moment’s respite. So lovely.

Here on Substack:

Lots of exciting things happening in poetry this week. Kind of makes you wonder why we still don’t have a Poetry category on Substack, doesn’t it?

• Did you see that

  Saffron Morter-Laing
  is curating a list of Substack poets? You should check it out and let her know who’s missing from the list. Maybe it’s you?

• Shannan Mann
  at The Only Poems Newsletter has announced a poetry contest! And not just any poetry contest. This one is ethical, writer-friendly and right here on Substack. What are you waiting for? Go on!

Designing a poetry contest without selling our soul

• The February Poetry Adventure is over (sniff!) but what an adventure it was. I’ve got twenty-one new first drafts to play with, plus a bunch of notes for additional poems that never got posted. Huge thanks to

  Petra Hernandez
  for steering this lovely party boat all month long. ( I actually just mistyped her name as Poetra. Coincidence? I think not.) And the Over Achiever Prize goes to poet
  Margaret Ann Silver
  at
  The World We Are
  who took all twenty-nine prompt words and wove them into one glorious poem. What a perfect ending to a lovely month.

Happy Reading, Everyone! Thanks so much for being here.