Wellspring

Caitlin Scarano

 

My fingers in your mouth, I find a soft history
of caverns, echoes of the last
two women who loved you—your wife
and the one after. How much flows
underground without us knowing?
When we were in Oregon, we hiked
to the headwaters of the Metolius.
It didn’t look like much, water bubbling
from a slit in the embankment. What we see
is deceptive—a slow trickle, 50,000 gallons
per minute. Kokanee salmon, rainbow
trout, bull trout, and mountain
whitefish. All those years I spent toiling
upstream. Wellspring, my god,
how I hunted you. Followed the tracks
of a snowshoe hare through a decade
of drifts. Hindfoot and forefoot. Followed
small drops of blood from my bedroom
to yours, like Gretel and her little stones.
At the headwaters that day, you took
a picture of us, our backs to the mountain. I kept
my eyes open despite the unrelenting light.
To think you were a stranger not so long ago
and now I’m inside of you. Cold,
clear, constant. Tributaries gather.
The fen fills with wildflowers—aster, pearly
everlasting, blazing-star. Fish spawn
and rot. Ribbon grass takes over. You will
suffer. I will suffer.

 
 

Caitlin Scarano is a writer based in Bellingham, Washington. Her second full length collection of poems, The Necessity of Wildfire, was selected by Ada Limón as the winner of the Wren Poetry Prize and will be released in spring 2022 by Blair.