Tonight my daughter
closes her fist
around the first snow
squeezes to make it
into a small cold ball
the shape of her hand,
and then offers it to me.
It tastes like sky,
like electric charge,
like winter, like childhood,
like curiosity.
And once again
I’m a girl who walks
to the neighbor’s yard
for a drink at the well—
I pump the heavy lever
and it draws clean, clear water
from the ground.
There’s a red metal ladle
hanging from a nail
on a nearby tree,
and the water tastes of moss
and rust and freedom.
There is a thirst
that’s been bequeathed us—
a thirst for what is
untreated and pure,
a thirst I somehow
manage to forget.
If it could speak,
the thirst might say,
Remember, remember,
remember.