Water: An Ode

Harbor and danger, featuring four poems about water by Winifred Hughes, Sandy Longley, B. Morrison and Colin McKim.
7 minutes

TRANSCRIPT

May flowers. They’re brought to you, as the saying goes, by April’s showers. That’s true for all of life: it’s made possible—at least in part—by water. The morning dew, the afternoon squall, the drinking fountain, the glistening pond. On this edition of Burning Bright, four pieces about water.

Winifred Hughes teaches nature writing and ecopoetry at the Watershed Institute in Princeton, NJ. In her poem “By the Brook,” she recalls the appeal of the sound of water as a factor in buying a house.

It was the sound of water, a small
gurgling and rushing overheard

in darkness that first entranced us,
sound in motion, motion in sound

that drew us back and we never left
but entered this house as a hermit crab

enters its shell and becomes a part
of it, part of each other and of these walls,

concrete block and wood, by the side
of water passing through on its way

unstoppable as the years that kept
rushing us past.

From her book The Village of New Ghosts, Winnifred Hughes’s poem “By the Brook.”

Sandy Longley lives in Provincetown, Massachussets out at the tip of Cape Cod. In this next poem, Sandy reflects on the astonishing sea life around her and ponders the consequences of our lack of regard for that life. “Town Opposes Proposal to Dump Contaminated Water into Cape Cod Bay.” It begins with the epigraph “For Eva and Thora.”

We walk the bay
beach at dusk,
a sanctuary, seeking
bioluminescence –
trillions of miniscule
creatures: zooplankton
await the signal for
their vertical migration
in self-organized,
carefully timed
ascents – clusters
straining toward light
and a food-rich surface –
avoiding predators,
providing nutrients,
moving carbon and
other elements around
for the very breath
of planet life then
returning to the sea
bed of mysteries. More
upwelling tomorrow.
More whale exhalation –
vapor that streams as
far as Omaha and Baja,
humpback songs that travel
through oceans to Namibia.
More copepods, menhaden –
see how they gleam by
the thousands! Firefly squid,
shellfish, sunfish, sea bass,
flounder, tautogs, turtles,
seals, ducks. Eel grasses
bend and sway in sync.
From her high perch
on a power pole an osprey
watches and whistles.
I hold your small hands
and try to fathom your
passage into the dubious
future of such abundance.

Sandy Longley’s poem “Town Opposes Proposal to Dump Contaminated Water into Cape Cod Bay” from her book Mothernest.

Sometimes, one image triggers another. B. Morrison said that the first line of her poem “By the Bay” came to her while she was rereading Stevie Smith’s poetry. She said Smith’s poem “Not Waving but Drowning” “reminded me of my mother telling us about the man she saw drown. With that memory came others, of dangers spoken and unspoken.” Here’s B. Morrison’s poem “By the Bay.”

“I watched a man drown,”
my mother often says.
She doesn’t say how he got there
so far out in the bay
only that she was a child,
helpless on the cliff,
and that we should never
not ever swim without her,
no matter
how tempting
the waves.

She warns too of the cliff
at our own place by the bay.
“Don’t stand too near the edge.”
Storms and hungry waves
have hollowed it out;
what seems so solid
the earth itself
might give way.

What she doesn’t explain
are the nights
I find her asleep by my bed
curled on the rug in her robe,
as though I can protect her
as though I have the power
to keep him at bay.
I can only lie there
awake to the night
and the hollow wash of the waves.

B. Morrison’s “By the Bay” from Passager’s 2023 Poetry Contest issue.

Colin McKim said that waterholes give life and snatch it away, a symbol of the world itself. He said the poem’s repetition echoes the rhythmic coming and going of predator and prey in this perilous arena. Death casts a pall. But in the dark mirror there is also beauty – sparks of hope that lift the heart and prompt the soul to seek the eternal. Here’s Colin’s poem “Waterhole.”

Darkness haunts the waterhole.
Nightmare creatures crouch and slink.
Darkness haunts the waterhole,
Waiting for a thirsty soul.
It’s never safe, but we must drink.

Danger stalks the waterhole.
Dry lips tremble at the brink.
Danger stalks the waterhole;
Fang and sinew take their toll.
The traps are set, but we must drink.

Shadows skim the waterhole.
A strike, a cry and down they sink.
Shadows skim the waterhole,
But mirrored deep, the heavens roll
And there are stars in every drink.

From Passager’s 2017 Poetry Contest issue, Colin McKim’s “Waterhole.” Colin said, “I write poetry because, like music and moonlight, it speaks directly to the heart.”

To buy Winnie’s book The Village of New Ghosts or Sandy’s book Mothernest, subscribe to, contribute to, or learn more about Passager and its commitment to older writers, go to passagerbooks.com. Passager offers a 25% discount on the books and journal issues featured here on Burning Bright. Visit our website to see what’s on sale this week.

Thanks to Dickinson College intern Alex Lee for her help with this podcast.

For Kendra, Mary, Christine, Rosanne, and the rest of the Passager staff, I’m Jon Shorr.