Like Water by Elizabeth Spires

Poems

October 2002

Like Water

Burke

was right!

It hadn’t been three months since he had died
when we sat together in your living room,
a green world going on outside, the June wind
blowing hot and hard, bending each leaf and branch,
while inside all was still: a still interior where
three women sat in shadow stirring summer drinks,
the room the same as it had always been,

but changed, his absence palpable. You said,
“I thought I’d gradually miss him less, the way
a craving for a cigarette lessens a little after weeks
of going without. It’s not like that.” You paused,
drawing in a breath. “It’s like a thirst that deepens
as each day passes. Like water,” you finally said.
“I want him back the way I want a drink of water.”

Elizabeth Spires' new book of poems, The Wave-Maker, was published by Norton in July 2008.

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