More or less a century ago they dug a flowing artesian well
with a water temperature just above ice.
Free of oxygen and chemicals, without the presence of living matter,
gushing out from a cast iron pipe
into a redolent cedar well house that one genuflected to access.
The dented cup, rinsed but never washed
left a faintly tinny aftertaste with each drink- so cold, so unformed, 
overwhelming the mouth and opening the mind.
But it was deemed more efficient to cap the well and run the source
through synthetic pipes into a heated cottage.
The wonder of drinking from a glacier became a glass of water.
                        

By seventy I’d exited the tragicomic operas
staged around work and frenetic socializing,
realized that my children were already ossifying,
the grandchildren were beyond my control,
and over half the people I’d known were dead.
I became a straggler in the jostling crowd
elbowing forward toward anticlimax,
and began, timidly, to look for detours,
which, when discovered, let me return
to the timeless perhaps of my childhood.