Melissa Hughes

Six Stories of Water

In ’55 the storms came, one then another, and flooded
the little mill creeks, then the Lehigh, the Delaware, the island
summer camp, children asleep, all washed downstream in the dark.

**

A sparrow in the bird bath first furtively ruffles, dips, quivers
then gives in, fully submerges, emerges, flapping fountain joyful,
again, and again, before darting to safety in sun-speckled holly to preen.

**

“What then must I do? I will go mad” says a father, his daughter
drowned in a sun-warmed country we will not mention
in our speeches or newspapers or conversations or prayers.

**

Raindrops queue along the roofline, drum the skylight. Sleep well
tonight; tomorrow in the moss-draped oaks the spiders will re-spin
their lines and the resurrection fern will green.

**

Frost was right about the ocean and us but we aren’t to blame—
it is too much—sharks born before the Mayflower, whales
singing from continental shelf to shelf, and we

**

are small and shallow, ripple and gone.
Three weeks no rain in the Piedmont and corn,
the sad congregation, bows and browns before the sun.

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Melissa Hughes is an MFA student and biology professor at the College of Charleston, where she studies bird songs and shrimp social behavior. Her poems explore the spaces and connections between our humanness and those who share the world with us and have appeared in Wild Roof and humana obscura.