The Water

from Field Stones
by Robert Kinsley

Morning at her sink
my mother wrings water
from a sponge, stares
out the window
at my father plowing
the field behind the house
the points set deep, sod
turning up its sad dark rows
another spring
feathering into farm.

On the stove
pans simmer and hum
in the other language of
water. The power of which is
inexplicable,
how it cries like a child
banished or scalds in a moment
the unsteady trembling hand
or flows
through the body into
each waiting cell
of the hen carried
in morning from
henhouse to yard
the body tucked
high up
under the arm, a mother
caressing the only child,
whose head is laid
just so, the axe
displacing the air
molecule joining molecule
pans to full boil

***

And how it lingers
in summer
at the corner of mouths
hung open
in disbelief
of the certain moment of
finality. The body
in its last desperate
flight the blood spore
as evidence,
like the dew
scattered lightly here in the grass.