Saturday, May 23, 2015

The Love Life of Water

The Love Life Of Water

The land's an old lover
of this water,
the bold blowsy flame who
blows into town
on the back of a riot.
The land's not really sure
he wants her back,

at least so much of her,
but after a wild night
he finds her seaweed hair
on his pillow anyway,
grey eyes bloodshot with lightning
 devouring his face,
her dirty dissolving fingers

exploring every fissure.
 Everything moveable here is hers,
and she will take it;
the land knows
all about that, because
she's been this way before
too many times.

The  last kiss is roughest, the overflow
 that leaves him drowned and gasping,
with the hard morning of living coming on,
while she smiles and makes a sound
like bells exploding
and moves her mirrors, her floods,
her funnels down the road.

~May 2015

It's been raining here for forty days and fifty nights--or so it seems. 
Listening to rain hit the walls as I write.

Optional Musical Accompaniment

Image credits: Frontyard flood, copyright joyannjones 2015
Street Flooding, Oklahoma City      courtesy KFOR News source
No copyright infringement intended


  1. I really love this sensual poem and it's characterization of an overflowing river as a greedy lover.

  2. What a fabulous description of rain and land, bound as lovers, more real than romantic. Each stanza is rich in thought and language.

  3. I know you're writing about the weather here, but the metaphor so reminds me of someone I used to know. So much trouble, such bad news, and completely impossible to say no to. ~sigh~

  4. Yikes. What a wonderful use of metaphor--almost inverted--water as flame--too heated, and yet not--a lover--you carry out the trope so very well that it brings with it a kind of epiphany--I love the fissures/fingers--all the rivulets--and that last awful kiss. Thanks. k.

  5. Listening to the tv scream "tornado on the ground" as I read. This is damp, dark, and beautiful, Hedge.

    1. Stay safe, MZ--watching the front yard float downstream here.

  6. listening to Patty Griffin now as I read this (Ron Shield post), but will tune SRV momentarily.

    The last verse is killer (hopefully not literally) ~

  7. Joy,
    A smart and artful response to the circumstances in your part of the world...
    I also see this as a metaphor of the creative drive, which can surprise us, overwhelm us, use us shamelessly, and then discard us without so much as a 'by-your-leave.'

    Steve K.

  8. What a mess, huh. A middle of extremes. -- This lovergal evokes the sinistral charms of the Lady in the Tub from "The Shining" -- One good drench and yer done. Three creepshow stanzas culminating into a shrieking kiss ('... a sound / like bells exploding") that takes everything when it leaves. Sending rubber duckies and bailing buckets your way.

    1. Thanks for the duckies, B--I could use some amusement here in the dreary soup. ;_) We just are not used to this wet stuff in the dust bowl. I have new sympathy for Floridians.

  9. I absolutely LOVE this. I want to put on pink rain boots and revel in their romance.

  10. WOW! Rain as a blowsy lover, the land isnt sure he wants back but cant resist. Spectacular!

  11. Watching the news, seeing the rivers up 40 feet out of their banks. It is brutal. So much loss. And on hte back of drought, the water just about crushed that earth that loves her. Not sure he wants her back he has become hardened and she just rages on destroying all in her path.

  12. A wonderful poem to revisit--so very naturalistic even as it's anthropomorphic. (And musical.) Very cool. Glad you have some sun though. k.

  13. It's hot and dry here... But reading your poem set me in want of lots of rain. Is that an odd thing to say, when it's obvious too much Water can be hard of Earth? Maybe it's because Earth loves her anyway, because it wouldn't want to live without her... even if at times, it drowns her in too much love.

    This was glorious.

