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Looking Through Well Water
 I hear grandmother singing,
she is singing in well water
I see her face as the waves stir
over cloudy white pebbles.
At the well`s mouth
fern fronds dark as hair
on an infant skull
nibble into stone.
She didn`t give birth to me
but when I look into the well
it`s her face I see, slight
freckled bones bent into water.
I`ll tell you what divides us:
a ridge of cloud, two oceans,
a winter in my fireless room
high above Van Cortlandt Park
also death, the darkest water
crashing through pebbles, fern
fronds, bits of speckled shell.
I hear the koil crying in well water
its beak is glazed with blood
it`s tilted on a nest of clouds
afloat and burning.
- Meena Alexander
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