Falling Water

F E B R U A R Y 1 9 9 8

FALLING WATER

by Peter Davison

Hear Peter Davison read this poem (in RealAudio).

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Also by Peter Davison:
You (2000)
Best Friend (2000)
These Days (2000)
No Escape (1997)
On Mount Timpanagos, 1935 (1997)
Like No Other (1997)
"I Hardly Dream of Anyone Who Is Still Alive" (1995)
The Unfrocked Governess (1994)
The Passing of Thistle (1989)
The Obituary Writer (1974)
Gifts (1965)
The Winner (1958)

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Wherever it commences perhaps as random
raindrop tapping on a leaf and tumbling
into a tea-stained mosscup

it helplessly inquires after
lower levels whether seeping
darkly through silt

and marl to enlarge an imprisoned
aquifer shortcut or taking its chances to trickle
out through a slit of clay to join its first

brook and amble off into the yielding
soft-shouldered marsh past fat roots of
lilies to linger among the slick fronds

of algae paddled by ducks pierced by
pickerel to hurry itself and
whisk into the outlet that will boil it

along a streambed grid of gravel toward another
stairstep of idleness the lucid
lake spritzed with sparkling sun

there to seek its breach to tip and hurtle into
yawning torrent and the great meander
that will sweep it slow and away out

and empty into the broad salt
    sleep that will cradle it until
        the sun siphons it again
        to knit into more rain.

Peter Davison is the poetry editor of The Atlantic Monthly. His books includeThe Fading Smile: Poets in Boston(1994) and The Poems of Peter Davison 1957-1995, published in paperback last year.