Hillman - Practical water

ALSO BY BRENDA HILLMANPOETRYWhite DressFortressDeath TractatesBright ExistenceLoose SugarCascadiaPieces of Air in the EpicCHAPBOOKSCoffee, 3 A.M.Autumn SojournThe FirecageAS EDITORThe Grand Permission: New Writingson Poetics and Motherhood [WITH PATRICIA DIENSTFREY] The Poems of Emily DickinsonWriting the Silences: Selected Poemsof Richard O. Moore [WITH PAUL EBENKAMP] PRACTICAL WATER BRENDA HILLMAN

WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY PRESS MIDDLETOWN, CONNECTICUT WESLEYAN POETRY Published by Wesleyan University Press
Middletown, CT 06459 Copyright 2009 by Brenda Hillman
All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hillman, Brenda. Practical water / Brenda Hillman. p. cm. paper) I. Title. Title.

PS3558.I4526P73 2009 811.54dc22 2009012350 Design and composition by Quemadura
Printed on acid-free, recycled paper
in the United States of America Wesleyan University Press is a member
of the Green Press Initiative. The paper
used in this book meets their minimum
requirement for recycled stock. This project is supported in part by an award
from the National Endowment for the Arts. This book is for my brothers, Brent & Brad Hillmanfor Cal Bedient & Forrest Ganderfor veterans of the current wars & CodePink

(OF INTERNATIONAL WATERS) Water, whatever it communicates, remains always at a level.
DAVID HUMEPolitical Discourse of 1755As far as the eye sees, little garments of rain .. .
BARBARA GUEST Constables Method ... the third commonness with light and air .. .
WALLACE STEVENS A River of Rivers in Connecticut Though this bright world of all our joy is in the human brain .. .
WILLIAM BLAKEThe Book of Urizen We bury the sparrows of Europe with found instruments, their breasts light as an ounce of tea where we had seen them off the path, their twin speeds of shyness & notched wings near the pawnbrokers house by the canal, in average neighborhoods of the resisters, or in markets of princely delphinium & flax, flying from awnings at unmarked rates to fetch crumbs from our table half-spinning back to clefs of grillwork on external stairs we would descend much later; in rainy neighborhoods of the resisters where streets were taken one by one, where consciousness is a stair or path, we mark their domains with notched sticks of hickory or chestnut or ash because our cities of princely pallor should not have unmarked graves. What does it mean to live a moral life It is nearly impossible to think about this We went down to the creek The sides were filled with tiny watery activities The mind was split & mended Each perception divided into more & there were in the hearts of the water molecules little branches perpendicular to thought Had lobbied the Congress but it was dead Had written to the Committee on Understanding Had written to the middle middle of the middle class but it was drinking Had voted in cafes with shoplifters & beekeepers stirring tea made of water hitched to the green arc An ethics occurs at the edge of what we know The creek goes underground about here The spirits offer us a world of origins Owl takes its call from the drawer of the sky Unusually warm global warming day out A tiny droplet shines on a leaf & there your creek is found It has borrowed something to link itself to others We carry ourselves through the days in code DNA like Raskolnikovs staircase neither good nor bad in itself Lower frequencies are the mind What happened to the creek is what happened to the sentence in the twentieth century It got social underground You should make yourself uncomfortable If not you who Thrush comes out from the cottony coyote bush glink-a-glink chunk drink trrrrrr turns a golden eyebrow to the ground We run past the plant that smells like taco sauce Recite words for water weeter wader weetar vatn watn voda [insert all languages here] Poor Rimbaud didnt know how to live but knew how to act Red-legged frog in the pond sounds like him Uncomfortable & say a spell: blossom knit & heel affixfiddle fern in the neck of the sun Its hard to be water to fall from faucets with fangs to lie under trawlers as horizons but you must Your species cant say it You have to do spells & tag them Uncomfortable & act like you mean it Go to the world Where is it Go there Sunlight tosses the small grasses its brain method. What does it mean to live a moral life It is nearly impossible to think about this We went down to the creek The sides were filled with tiny watery activities The mind was split & mended Each perception divided into more & there were in the hearts of the water molecules little branches perpendicular to thought Had lobbied the Congress but it was dead Had written to the Committee on Understanding Had written to the middle middle of the middle class but it was drinking Had voted in cafes with shoplifters & beekeepers stirring tea made of water hitched to the green arc An ethics occurs at the edge of what we know The creek goes underground about here The spirits offer us a world of origins Owl takes its call from the drawer of the sky Unusually warm global warming day out A tiny droplet shines on a leaf & there your creek is found It has borrowed something to link itself to others We carry ourselves through the days in code DNA like Raskolnikovs staircase neither good nor bad in itself Lower frequencies are the mind What happened to the creek is what happened to the sentence in the twentieth century It got social underground You should make yourself uncomfortable If not you who Thrush comes out from the cottony coyote bush glink-a-glink chunk drink trrrrrr turns a golden eyebrow to the ground We run past the plant that smells like taco sauce Recite words for water weeter wader weetar vatn watn voda [insert all languages here] Poor Rimbaud didnt know how to live but knew how to act Red-legged frog in the pond sounds like him Uncomfortable & say a spell: blossom knit & heel affixfiddle fern in the neck of the sun Its hard to be water to fall from faucets with fangs to lie under trawlers as horizons but you must Your species cant say it You have to do spells & tag them Uncomfortable & act like you mean it Go to the world Where is it Go there Sunlight tosses the small grasses its brain method.

Once it gave us a dynamic hurt but weve gotten over it. Wobbly jay: the aspen is see-thru today, waiting for the Ice Age, & alphabets appear in every stem of it, tail shaking to a Y not far from ecstasy. The diverted creek sounds sad so maybe i better take our dowsing stick out to the field, for our Y will pull & find buried water. With twig lines on our face & humming. With up & down for the world needs a water-finding stick for bringing wrecked water sideways beneath blue mist For water wants to be equal. Water wants to be equal & the world needs women with sticks & dusk husks, since they have taken the husks of damselflies when they straightened the creek, when the golf course needed its tight white globals (though the cowbirds yellow beanie eye will survive the terrible pocked ball) Where there is a break in the fence near sweet horses we will skip through & hold down our stick in a shiny chipping field, cabbage white butterflies in pairs, pennyroyal Diet Pepsi plastic on its side & to the diverted creek & old creek bed say Meet this dowsing wand Come in Mist rose this morning as i crossed the field; heard the crooked cries cry creek to me, cried creek to me unable that the world wants water girls to work with mice, chipping off the blossom part of bitterbrush to save for later.

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