dry well

1. Something will have to be got out of it one day....

There was a pocket handkerchief patch
of grey soil, in the bend of the farm drive,
beside where the new thornless youngberries
went in later. That bit of grey soil was hotter
than the red as grey soil reflected heat.
In summer we grew home tomatoes there
-to ripen better, Or staggered brussels sprouts
for warmer winters.

When I was little I'd water tomatoes or pick
sprouts nearby five fenceposts laid flat,
across the top of a dark hole. Dad said
it was The Well which his father, our Grandad,
Karl Allan Knoll dug, believing that, of all
our hilltop only grey-soil would hold water
[for the normal red soil was self-mulching
so porous, water just sponged away].

But we didn't water tomatoes from the well.
There were pipes and hoses force-pumped
before then. The supply was a creek-dam
right down the bottom of the farm
over the hill.

Times when a man would want
to have a well on top of the hill seemed lost
in archaic perverseness.

But like that darkness going down into
the earth it drew our curiosity.
Like a dead bird would, or like horror story.
It made us want an unknown,
some absence where there should be earth.
The airy darkness going down below
the light chinks, had us imagining all sorts,
unbeings, hair-raising shadows.

We asked Daddy if we could look in,
then, when he pulled back the posts
that made a cover, we lay on grey soil
and nosed down into musty nothing.

Dry and empty, except for
a frog on the bottom.

Dead leaves. Dug abandon!
The Well was useless when needed.
Red porous soil cupped that grey
pocket, breaking gritty sieves
in its impervious membrane. Water rose
with the groundwater-table in winter
and spring, and sunk to nought come the dry. '

We need to fill it in,' Dad said. 'It's dangerous.
The cow might break a leg! Something
will have to be got out of it one day.'


2. Something seemed to be wasted.

What had been for Grandad a source
of inspiration enough for him to dig was,
by course, for Dad a waste of time,
a goose chase, a fool's black hole.

There was no quench or draught
to be found in his father's well.
It was a diminishing source,
a withering spring, where there
should have been flow.

Something seemed to be wasted in
all that work, suffering, and life
gone astray.

The Divining Rod Grandad allowed
himself for importance across earth
was given a little tug. There was water
below, but by heaven was it enough?
A divining rod twitches for us, like
a source in the depths of a heart,
but the 'dig' was after-wards
for Dad as bitter as for poor Burke
at Cooper's Creek, and likewise,
in reactive parches, it wasn't lack
of water which sent life dry.


The well, that false start for Grandad,
who hoped he divined a source where
his sons and daughters might drink
and be satisfied, and was my father's bane;
became, for us boys, a source of revelation,
an opened window into the depths which
showed where a story was, allowed a way
through to that empty vessel below
the surface of the earth, in truth,
a draught of unsung mystery beneath.

Like feelings allowed to be expressed,
like an open flow on, of what we felt,
what had happened. Emotions in
the bowels of our being there
were wanting to be let out.

The dry well yawned, thirsting to let
dim depths breathe clear air, to lay
ghosts to rest, to let out buried failures,
to release clod-bound matters.

A well might fail, then source hurt and so
be a forgiveness, source understanding.
Like bowls of Israel's Passover dashed
full of blood, which splashed up 'let us go'.

But for Dad the well was dry, old rags,
indigestible matters sat in a bloodless pit
waiting for digestive juices to flow,
but the past could not be made to pass,
the well remained dry, no emotions
sallied forth out of the bowels,
nothing moved, a clod fell, crumbled,
scant pinchers held any depths of feeling out.

So we began to throw our family rubbish
back down the hole. A leeway of shame
ended all that effort dug in hope.

The shovel marks still scored a pattern
of deep Project in the walls. But Dad
saw a dry well as an act of folly,
a white-elephant blown out of a Father's
typical wilfulness to only get on with things
when the spirit moved.

But, in burying our least precious stuff,
other things get buried.

Empty pineapple cans, old paint tins,
old work clothes full of holes, broken
picture frames, eaten-out wires,
dead workboots, burnt roofing iron,
leaky gumboots, holed saucepans,
gouged truck tyres, handleless frypans,
toothbrushes with no bristles, dried-up
shoes, the shells of passing and skins
of life past...These things passed down
into a dry hole to wait in slow-digest.

When the well was full
soil was dumped to fill over the fill.
Then lumps of grey soil was graded
across till soil stopped sinking .
The well passed away, went under,
so ever since that place looks like
any other surface, there is no way
to tell that there is a dry well filled in
out there. The ground clots, opens
as it is tilled, but a story out of memory
yawns, as the dry emotions still
wait to come to pass.


25 September 1999 © Wayne David Knoll
Coburg, Victoria