The Tender Deluge

At home, there are no mountains.

One must travel North for hours

To see so much as trees

unplanted and unplanned.

The water we drink is gathered there,

They say,

Purified by the roots of oaks and elms,

On Catskill mountainsides.

There,

The hooded willows

Chant in silence sweet

To the hidden channels

Gushing with life.

They say,

You can taste it in the water

That rolls down in rivers carved,

Crawling from the Croton Watershed,

The quickness of the world, the verve

Of living things, and the choir of the Mountains.

The hymns of the Wind

Sing the water awake.