Digging the Well
On our plot between the river
and the railroad track,
there is a well. We discovered
it by chance — weeds had covered
all but a sliver
of its rim
which time had filled to the brim
with soil and rock.
Was the earth calling,
like something long asleep,
to be heaved up
from the deep
where her stolen daughter
sets a table of water
for filling buttercups?
Ignoring the risk of falling
in, we dug as far as we could go
with our digging hoe.
And then we sent our son down.
Up he looked at us and laughed —
oblivious as a canary in the shaft.
He couldn’t drown;
it was mid-July
and the well was dry.
But there we saw
in that short space
between us and his little face
the length of life’s string —
and felt the sting
of knowing we draw
from our own grave
to water what we have.
Erica McAlpine is an American-born poet, translator and scholar currently based in Oxford, England.
Readers aren’t told in which country or town the poem’s excavation is set: the reference to the “railroad track” may simply be a matter of natural choice for an American writer, and not a geographical indicator in the poem. It’s already clear that Digging the Well doesn’t depend on specific local detail. The “plot between the river / and the railroad track” suggests primarily a summoning of symbols: a well, a (presumed) couple and a child are a plot, in both the sense of a storyline and a settled space, while the river and railroad track either side represent movement and impermanence.
The well has been “discovered”, previously having been largely “covered”: it turns out that the narrative “plot” leads to an uncovering deeper than the excavation first suggests. Verse two travels down into the underworld of Greek, perhaps pre-Greek, mythology. “Was the earth calling, / like something long asleep, / to be heaved up / from the deep / where her stolen daughter / sets a table of water / for filling buttercups?” This is a charming image of Persephone’s preparation for the approach of summer, with a possible pun on the kind of table a good daughter might “set” for her mother (Demeter, in this case) and the setting up of a water-table. But there’s a hint of danger for the humans at the surface. While the narrative voice remains happily casual, even boastful about “ignoring the risk of falling // in”, the depth of the closing enjambment between “falling” and “in” suggests a jolt of fear. It’s with a certain amount of relief, it seems, that the speaker proclaims, in a restorative rhyming couplet, “we dug as far as we could go / with our digging hoe.” A visit to the underworld was never a serious proposition or heavier machinery than a “digging hoe” would have been required.
Matters remain playful in verse three, when the son is sent down into the well, “oblivious as a canary in the shaft”. A child-canary in a mine is no joke, but McAlpine’s tone and her un-scheming pursuit of end-rhymes, irregularly patterned but with no line in any stanza lacking, sooner or later, a companionable chime, adds to the impression that solid ground is always attainable, if unpredictably. Vertigo is just possible, though – a sensation produced by the “down/up” proximity achieved in lines three and four by a wittily tweaked word order describing the moment the child looks up: “And then we sent our son down. / Up he looked at us and laughed …” But the reader is further reassured, with “dry” humour and another friendly rhymed couplet, that “he couldn’t drown; / it was mid-July / and the well was dry”.
That, of course, isn’t the end of the poem. Now there’s a further discovery. The space between the child’s “little face” and the adults standing above him reveals “the length of life’s string”. The length of a piece of string, the subject of the eternal proverbial question, is gently hinted. The rhyme-word “sting” brings its long association with “death’s sting” and also bears the colloquial meaning of “a rip-off”.
In each verse, the end-of-line rhymes, whatever their degree of proximity, may be less reassuring than they first appear. They may represent a limited currency being gradually used up by the speaker, her partner and her readers, who have shared “the sting / of knowing we draw / from our own grave / to water what we have.” The half-rhyme of this closing couplet plots a fine contrast of vowel-sound and consonants, marking the distinction between the heavy grip of “our own grave” and the far lighter, more tenuous clasp on “what we have”.
As the title of McAlpine’s new Carcanet collection tells us, Small, Pointed Things are revealed in various poses and guises (bats, swallows, a scorpion, etc) but the poems themselves can sometimes be identified as “pointed”, logical but equally critical of certainty, indicating unexpected directions that can hurt complacency and disrupt the wish for the order represented by poetry’s form and pattern. In the current poem, the sting-sharp point is that a discovery, a well of possibilities, may be shallower but closer to the “underworld” than the owners had first imagined.
Small Pointed Things by Erica McAlpine (Carcanet Press Ltd, £11.99). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
