Water

The faucet spits out water

That may or may not have E-Coli.

But I’m thirsty after a long day in the summer sun

And E-Coli is not real to me in my house with a front porch and

A brick walkway, where water freezes and mailmen slip and complain

In winter.

Water is water is gold

To the people who walk miles to the river with buckets and rags

Filtering water out of dirt, to find something drinkable- A miracle

To survive. Water is everywhere when you have it

Nowhere, when you don’t.

When E-Coli came, my grandmother looked at her hands wondering

Whose fingers she had stolen

The water looked like water and she questioned

Why her old friend, Tom Markey, who had died 36 years ago, had to go home

When she awoke from a nap in a chair in a room that she slept in.

Every time she walked into the room, she asked

Who had rearranged the furniture? But the response was a hug, a box of medicine

And a glass of water.

The constant fight to make water better by making it “Smart” or “Vitamin”

Is a futile struggle that comes to trickery and green paper that people

Endlessly crunch in and out of their pockets for more and more water.

The water in the ocean is sharp in the Fall.

My glass at the dinner table between my grandmother and me

sweats on the flowers on the tablecloth.

She looks at me with a smile and says, “It’s SO good to see you!”,

To her, I might be her grandson, her uncle, her third cousin, or a fireman

But she is happy to see me, so I smile back

Water will always be water to grandma, who sees all her old friends when she naps

And is always happy to see me

-Oliver