Tag: thirst

Elsewhere

~ Lynne Burnett ~ 8 Comments
Photo by Joseph Greve on Unsplash

You drink the cool clean water
and smack your lips, refreshed.

Elsewhere, in this same country,
the water is not clean,
must be boiled, then drunk.

Elsewhere, you might be dying
to drink it as is,
and damned if you do.

Elsewhere, water means business.
It thickens wallets.
You will pay for it.

You could ask whose future is being spent
down to the last hovering drop.

You could ask about thirst—who thirsts
for a better life and who for just a life
to grow all the way up in.

But you don’t. You drain the glass
and turn on the tap for more.
There’s never not been more.

This poem, written 20 years ago and finally published in The American Journal of Poetry in 2019 (with deep thanks to editor Robert Nazarene) unfortunately addresses a continuing and current situation (I’m thinking of Texas). It was inspired by watching my thirsty ten year old son gulp down a glass of water and imagining this conversation. He must have heard me – he continues to ask all the right questions about this world that he and all our kids and grandkids will inherit.

Thirst

~ Lynne Burnett ~ 2 Comments

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Photo by Michaël Bethouart on Unsplash

Enough rain today to banish all thirst—
but what of the thirst I was born with:
to taste the sweet and formless
wonder of my own soul,
to have it held up as perfect
and infinitely translatable?

Lift that crystal goblet
repeatedly to my lips
and I will be drunk
with love for you, and I
will lift it again and again
to yours.

I’ll say then, we are forgetful
gods and goddesses
wandering the streets
of our lives. I’ll say,
let’s celebrate being found
and slake those ancient longings,

for this is not a thirst
I want to die with—
the coveted bottle cellared,
we, the ones not poured.

Another poem from my chapbook “Stealing Eternity”.

 

The Climb

~ Lynne Burnett ~ 6 Comments

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A hard uphill climb past faultless
rocks and towering tribes of trees—
heart, leg and arm muscles
pumping steadily, sweating so much
I become a sea of tiny rivers
heading for a self-determined shore,
my lungs emptying, filling, in an
incoming, outgoing tide of breaths

bridging the centuries:
I breathe the air of the living
and of the dead, of heroes and
villains, of those asleep—curled
tight as buds, and those who’ve risen
to reap the blossom of their genius.
Molecule by unforgotten molecule,
the gasp is laid against the sigh.

Now, simply inhaling the storied air
between mountaintop and valley
and returning it, warmed, into the world
becomes historic and intimate,
an act of love in the arms of creation,
a means to living largely in the smallest
of ways, like the length a lotus stalk
will grow to uphold a lily pad.

How my lungs still heave! – as if they
know that breaths not deeply breathed
will amount to a life not fully lived
in the carnal kingdom of the body,
its ecstatic depths not drunk from.
That if I thirst for this, and cannot speak—
so parched my lips—I must climb then
the trail of every tear that can.

An older poem, inspired by the mountainous landscape in which I live, first published in North Shore Magazine before being included in my earlier chapbook “Stealing Eternity”.

Morning Blessing

~ Lynne Burnett ~ 2 Comments

Photo by Joseph Greve on Unsplash

One large glass of water daily
before the endless cups of green tea,

a glass that stood wrapped
a long time in my father’s two hands,

head bowed to it, eyes closed
to the rest of us at the table.

I didn’t know what he thought
or felt or said to himself right then

nor how thirsty I was
for a silence so meant

until I felt it filling me too,
slaking the cracked creekbed

of rushed and ordinary days.
Fifty-five years old and home for a visit,

back in the cradle
of his slow kind hands.

This poem won first place in Pandora’s Collective 2012 contest and is included in my new chapbook “Irresistible”. Only two weeks left to reserve a copy here!