The Glacier
Issue Four
Winter 2025

Notes on water

When I see water, I think of the divine
Both ordinary and near. I think of 
How all things gather one at a time.
I think of soaring light and what if
Where we are headed is nowhere special.
I think of surface and depth, how it lets
Us leave ourselves as one thing and return
As another. I think, too, of water’s 
Mad silence, how it carries every single
Person I’ve ever known. And of its long 
Sorrows, the way they shift and mingle
About rocks until they break into myth.
Once I was a child wading in the cold 
Depths, the blind stone beneath my feet. 
I’d been happy then. Now I live near a well 
With water not clean enough to drink
Or so my son says. He’s taking a class 
On water pollution. He texts me asking
What value does a thing have once it’s been
Taken for granted? I tell him I wish 
I’d given more thought to this. I tell him 
I wish I had more than eyeless fish to offer.

Peter Grandbois is the author of fourteen books, the most recent of which is Domestic Bestiary. His plays have been performed in St. Louis, Columbus, Los Angeles, and New York. He is poetry editor at Boulevard and teaches at Denison University in Ohio. You can find him at www.petergrandbois.com.

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