Drawing Water from Trotter Creek

Brian E. Backstrand

bebackstra@aol.com

630-939-3313

Feeding the Herefords

Two bright blue buckets

of hard plastic with stout pewter bails

sit brimming with water drawn from the creek.

Sky touches the surface of the water

still alive from the slow decanting while to the west

today’s sun long absent appears in fading light.

Small white flakes of snow drift down, touching

grass, my body resting, the silent flow of stream swollen

and full like an udder or new-built nest.

I stand in blackbird and robin sound, the purling

of pure water while at my feet the clear cold flow is

gathered, joyous. Am I at the Ganges, the Jordan flow

Jabbok ford, Walden? Standing in the orb,

this surround of just one moment, I have dipped into the stream of time

shimmering in my two buckets as I bend

Straighten with the effort, the lurch of liquid burden:

and I have worked to keep them pure from the muddy bank

which I climb to take the slow return.

Worlds lie just beneath my hands

and I cannot see the bottom, just the surface where the sky

swirls as I walk with this mute offering

To my cows penned with their calves

the buckets lifted up, silver streaming into the black trough,

two swirling worlds my gift to them for the night ahead.