Bradford pears and dogwoods litter
the hillside, spot
the yards in town.
My mother-in-law tells me
to know the difference
it’s in the timing: Bradford pears
come first, when
briars are just greening and
willows just budding and
sometimes, I hardly live here.

#

One day, a blue and white bird pecks
at the feeder’s chicken wire
which holds in the bigboxstore seed
I moved from its plastic bag
just yesterday.

It swings.

Moremoremore, little bird calls, black
sunflower seed in its black
pointed beak, then flies off.
“Chickadee,” I say mournfully;
it was my coming which scared it off. I squint
at the gone movement.
“Nuthatch,” my mother-in-law corrects
grim beneath the arch of her brows
she doesn’t miss the twitch
of my nose, involuntary and
forever inaccurate.
Her long, black dress rattles when

she shakes her head at the heat,
dabs her matted bangs
with a shredding tissue
and wishes she had a tall glass of the well water
of her girlhood.

#

There’ll never be another water that tastes
quite like that well water,
I’m sure of it, because
even though she has a few decades on me,
I, too, was raised up on thirsting
for it after hot summer bike rides,
midnight wakings, early morning breakfast
in the dark before school.
I thirst for it,
now—streams below us too polluted to bother with,
and anyway, the pump’s dislodged.
A velvety moss gowns
the well’s paint-chipped block sides,
soon-to-be torn down to make way for the house addition.
Bigger. Better. Moremoremore.

#

Instead, we have city water that smells sterile and
clean straight from the faucet,
comes out smooth and frothy
until it settles in the glass.
It makes poor coffee.
We drink it flavored, diluting the cleaners:
Kool-Aid, sweet tea, and blackest coffee.
My mother-in-law watches me carry a pitcher-full of sweet tea
out to our table on the patio. She eyes my bare arm
as I pour a tall glass for her: the weight of my motherhood sags
toward the earth and I interpret that keen look as her sort of approval,
even though I can’t tell a Bradford pear from a dogwood,
a chickadee from a nuthatch,
a place from a time.
The prerequisite of knowing is inside the accent.
Moremoremore, doesn’t call the nuthatch.
I fill the light plastic watering can
carry it to the concrete birdbath,
watch the neighbor straddle the ditch, hose
his Bradfords or dogwoods, drinking up

the city, their pruned ovals imperfectly perfect,
and I remember for my sons:
the undiluted taste of well water
mineral rich and alive.