“There the pump stands…marking the centre of another world.”—Seamus Heaney, “Mossbawn”
Ordered toward that quiet space
of snakes, where the yard hose
snakes past the mole that lies
thrillingly dead in the ant bed,
and a puzzle of ivy shadows
riddles the cracked cinderblock
walls of the house, I followed—
without question—the question-
marked hose, past each prickly
holly bush and a manic rush
of insects, to this other world
where a spigot handle bloomed
out of the pipe in the ground.
My father swung the nozzle,
pistol-whipping air, hollered,
Let there be water! and so there
I let water be: three twanged
clockwise cranks of the handle,
and water flowed like language
from my world to that other,
to where he stood by the boat,
washing the new world’s words:
bow, rudder, batten, transom, stern.
