Quabbin Reservoir

By J.R. Greene

The winds didn’t shift but they blew over water,
after wafting the leaves and the birds for all years,
the rain is the joy of the men at the works,
for the herds and the plows are but thoughts in the waves.
No one works or prays or even sits and talks about
the news and the weather, or love, life, and politics.
Fish are all who drink this here or those unknowing
and far away who waste and want but don’t seem to save.
Roads go under and streams don’t flow
in the bed of sand and the stumps that serve as markers,
for they even pulled out the dead (so those would forget).
And they say that some can’t come here but others can,
if they have the right reasons five miles long,
if they want to study the nothing and write all kinds
of nothing just to leave behind nothing.
Still a few of us know what’s beyond the foundations
And the rust in the pines and the endless water;
your home is your castle until everyone wants it,
then they just come in and take it and his and hers
and even theirs, and all the plants and soil and rocks.
A life means nothing to a lot of greed,
No matter that they could end up being handed
the exact sort of thing that they had demanded.