Walking Water
Inside us the ocean
sways like a cradle
in which we rock rock
and are drawn like the tide
to the moon twice a day
we carry our water and it carries us
we are a good pail with legs
foot by foot on the turning
mountain of the world
water walking on the prairie
walking water on the road
up the stairs through a door
where the view rushes out of us
through the window to the woods
rushing water in the desert
rushing water in this chair
and that one you’re in
water walking
and what is solid is not at all
what we thought the rock
worn away by the rocking
Copyright © 2016 by Wyatt Townley. From Rewriting the Body (Stephen F. Austin Press, 2018). Originally published in Prairie Schooner. Used with permission of the author.
Wyatt Townley
Wyatt Townley was born in Kansas City, Missouri, and received a BFA in dance from Purchase College at the State University of New York–Purchase.
She is the author of four collections of poetry: Rewriting the Body (forthcoming from Stephen F. Austin University Press); The Afterlives of Trees (Woodley Press, 2011), winner of the Nelson Poetry Book Award; The Breathing Field (Little, Brown & Co., 2002); and Perfectly Normal (The Smith, 1990). She is also the author of Yoganetics (HarperCollins, 2002).