I wasn’t aware
that I hadn’t told him
in a plain and straightforward way
that we haven’t had running water
in eleven months.

In the midst of last winter
the well went dry.

They dug deeper

still nothing.

They dug a new sand point –

still nothing.

So we’ve adapted.

His exasperation and outrage shocked me,
from this human who has never been here.
I said,
luckily we live on a river
so we can easily bathe
in our backyard.

This doubled his exasperation.

I didn’t tell him
that for nearly three years
the river has been
my preferred bathing spot.
It has become a touchstone
for me,
this tidal body of water
whose edges I collapse on
who I turn to,
with any and all emotion
on any and all days.

I can depend on this river
and its clockwork motions,
the way I’ve come to depend
on the blooming turning shedding leaves
of the alders that line its far bank
and their bare naked arms
as white in the winter
as the rare snow that we get.

It’s only then
when the surface melds into sheets of ice
that we take to bird baths
from a pot
heated on our wood stove,

but even that
is not good enough for him,
and still my father repeats

that I was raised to know better.