Evaporation Poems

Evaporation Poems

by Kathleen Norris

from Journey, 2001

1.

I would like to be as mobile as my mind

I had a religious aunt who was

(she flew out a window

into the Ideal).

So much noise:

the water in stems,

the workings of teeth,

intestines. Such

foolishness, she said,

wanting to be free

of breath's rise and fall,

wanting to be

no body.

2.

Transformation

has is price.

Do not dare to say that the water's need

is a simple one,

or that we shall all be changed.

3.

All summer I have watched the water

take whatever shape it can,

whispering "there is the past,

and the future, and between the two of them

you must be careful not to disappear."

Now I see so clearly on the days

when rain turns to snow,

how wind passes quickly

along the surfaces of things,

how calmly it probes this chilly place

where I have moved

with everything I own.