Once in Arkansas I pried the boards
from an old-time well
and lowered myself down,
bracing my back against the stones
till the circle of light above me
became a kind of moon.
The coolness of air boarded up
in the earth crept under my shirt,
and the stones grew slippery
with seepage and moss
the farther I went down.
Ten feet? Twenty? I couldn't tell how far
before I became afraid
of the looseness of the stones,
the fact that I was miles
from the note I left that morning.
There, balled up in a well
that no one had drunk from,
maybe for decades, I dropped
lit matches and heard their hiss
as they hit the water
I couldn't see. But what
I remember most about that day
was the climbing back toward light
and how it was difficult,
the heat of late July
and the gradually expanding sky
that opened upon on goldenrod
as I crested the rim of the well.
- charles rafferty
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