Tapping the Ancient Well

Dig into the hill at the back
of the house, the hill facing the lake,
my father instructs me in a dream.
Willing child. Down onto my knees
with bare hands and spade, I dig
and find a labyrinth of pipes and drains
made soft by moss. Music swells
from their insides, like an urgent tapping
on a night-dark window, like the stunted
toll of a bell held fast.

Everywhere secrets drain down
into earth. Everywhere poison
words and bruises and untold stories
and every last starving dream drip
down the pipe works. Down and down
until they are earth itself: dirt and bone
and rock. And deeper yet they become
the center of things, a raging shining core.

I dig and dig at my father’s behest.
I dig, and the night air clothes my bones
with its damp chill and the hours
pass and the raw smell of earth
rises and I dig on knowing that soon
I will render myself on the heat of this burning.


Poet's note: A poem about human relationships and history, and how the past - all its known and unknown stories - influences the future for better and for worse. A poem about becoming oneself in the midst of all that.