Granite-willed, a wall encloses the well
where a rusty bucket teeters on a hook,
its bottom blooming with algae patches.

Years since anyone lowered the bucket
or there was drinkable water, yet as mute
testament to another time, a marker

of those who once tread the field among
cattle and square bales of hay, no shrine
would better suffice than this old tool

burrowed through topsoil, loam and sand
to tap an underground stream: whatever
we were and are now, such water knows.  

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Ravi Shankar, founding editor of the international journal of the arts Drunken Boat and poet-in-residence at Central Connecticut State, has published a book of poems, Instrumentality (Cherry Grove), named a finalist for the 2005 Connecticut Book Awards. He has appeared as a commentator on NPR and written poems, reviews and essays for The Paris Review, Fulcrum, Time Out New York, the AWP Writer's Chronicle, and Poets & Writers, among many others. He is currently co-editing an anthology of contemporary Arab and Asian poetry, due out with Norton in Fall 2007.
E-mail: shankarr at ccsu dot edu
Websites: interview
poems in audio
forthcoming anthology edited by Ravi Shankar  

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