Love and water. Missing you.
How you kneeled to test the eggs
on the concrete by the house
where vendor women squatted
to show us their full baskets.
While they took them from their heads
you fetched the bowl of water
and plunged the eggs in, watched them:
did they rise, lie flat, or float?
Love and water. Cold full tubs
of leftover bathwater.
Daddy first, you next, then us
Ruthy, then me, littlest,
wet all over. Slip-sliding.
Graduated from the way
you washed me in the kitchen
in the oval washing tub.
Love and water. Six years old,
in the deep rainwater drum
I ducked to heart-stopping cold,
lifted my head for a breath
of the heat behind the duplex
then hid again. So so cold.
Water and love. The kettles
the boiling kettles, whistling,
the rows of bottles, clear, green,
metal, short, tall, and the plastic
funnel, with the handkerchief
over it to catch dead bugs.
Old enough now to handle
boiling water, help Ruthy,
dance the water through its steps
through kettles, filter, funnel,
bottles, then to watch it cool.
Waiting for the sweet cold drink.
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today the prompt was to write an anacreontic, a poem of seven-syllable lines about love and wine. I changed it a little.
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