In what way are we all pulling
from the same well?
How deep do we go
to draw these imagined waters
from the dank cavernous depths?
Each of us born to a body; tattooed
by circumstance, that picked you or me
with a will as breezy and carefree
as a change in the wind.
The hollow in our heads all cut
from the same cheap cookie cutter
shapes. What happens inside
these boundaries, how you cook it
seems to set all the difference.
Back at the well again—
what stops the water
from going stale and fetid?
These two crossed sticks
tell me there’s a current running,
screaming somewhere
underneath all the dust and dirt
down in the greater hollow.
A pan-psychic aquifer that buffers
the roiling inferno of iron
that without would surely steam
any water we ever hope to drink.