Well

red wolf journal (online) February 2014

Red Wolf Editions: Visitations (Online Author’s Collection) March 2023

All the water we needed was
well below the glacial till.
Twelve gallons a minute, four
hundred feet down. Charlie
and his boys had to keep
changing the bit, making sure
the mud went down smooth, the
flush and cuttings came up
like they should.
                                Three
blistering days went by
before they hit anything
vaguely resembling bedrock;
three days of a grumbling crew,
the chaser truck shuttling
back and forth for pipe,
for Cokes and smokes and
general store hoagies, hotter
than sweltering hell and only
the middle of May.
                                Tonight,
two Mays later, I’m out on
the deck, an icy gin and tonic
reminds me it’s almost summer
again, Venus smiles down, farmboys
off in the distance, probably
drunk, have themselves a little
impromptu fireworks display,
either because they just got back
from Toronto, or because they’re
too whopping drunk to know it’s
not quite the Fourth.
                                Either way,
I’m waiting for you here
beside the well tonight, enjoying
the show from a distance; happy
as man lately lost in the desert
come in at last for something cool
to drink.