practical water

by brenda hillman


What does it mean to live a moral life

It is nearly impossible to think about this

We went down to the creek
The sides were filled 
    with tiny watery activities

The mind was split & mended
Each perception divided into more

& there were in the hearts of the water molecules
    little branches perpendicular to thought

Had lobbied the Congress but it was dead
Had written to the Committee on Understanding
Had written to the middle  
    middle of the middle
    class but it was drinking
Had voted in cafes with shoplifters &
    beekeepers stirring tea made of water
    hitched to the green arc

An ethics occurs at the edge 
of what we know

The creek goes underground about here
     
The spirits offer us a world of origins    
Owl takes its call from the drawer of the sky



Unusually warm global warming day out

A tiny droplet shines 
    on a leaf & there your creek is found
   
It has borrowed something to
    link itself to others

We carry ourselves through the days in code
DNA like Raskolnikov’s staircase neither
    good nor bad in itself

Lower frequencies are the mind
What happened to the creek 
    is what happened
    to the sentence in the twentieth century 
It got social underground

You should make yourself uncomfortable 
If not you who

Thrush comes out from the cottony 
   coyote bush glink-a-glink 
           chunk  drink 
   trrrrrr
   turns a golden eyebrow to the ground

We run past the plant that smells like taco sauce

Recite words for water 
    weeter wader weetar vatn
    watn voda 
[insert all languages here]

Poor Rimbaud didn’t know how to live 
    but knew how to act
Red-legged frog in the pond sounds like him



Uncomfortable & say a spell: 
blossom knit & heel affix
fiddle fern in the neck of the sun

It’s hard to be water
    to fall from faucets with fangs
    to lie under trawlers as horizons 
    but you must

Your species can’t say it
You have to do spells & tag them
     
Uncomfortable & act like you mean it
    
Go to the world
Where is it
Go there

 


“Practical Water” was previously published in Practical Water (Wesleyan University Press, 2009)