My cabin well ran dry
steps from a spring-fed lake
No potable water
and a one-month stay
Like a rural woman of India
I became a water-bearer
Unlike her I didn’t trudge
the five miles into town
fill up jugs lug them home
balanced on my head
I drove the distance weekly
bought 10 gallons for
drinking cooking
washing dishes Flushed
with lake water Swam
I thought often of those women
How the soil of their croplands
victim of monsoon vagaries
had become like stone
beneath their hoes
how toxins had been dumped
by foreign corporations and
by their own selves
until rivers had become brown
death trickling through
their cupped hands
and of how heedlessly I’ve lived
This poem first appeared in Wisconsin Poets Calendar.
—
CJ Muchhala’s work has been published in New Poetry from the Midwest and other anthologies, in print and on-line journals including Gyroscope Review, WordPeace and Thimble, displayed regionally in collaborative art/poetry exhibits and nominated for the Best of the Net and twice for the Pushcart Prize.
