The women knew rivers
like beans.
The water rushes
over colored beads
and trinkets
sorting, polishing
until
they are clean.

For eating, for drinking,
for bathing,
or doing laundry;
the water purifies
the stones, too,
which return
clean water.

Water to drink.
Beans to eat.
Tiny ornaments to admire.

Girls meet
near the watershed
to dance
and swim.
The secret place
no one sees
because it’s balding,
infertile.
Selecting books
for their collection
while trading
the novel
chapter by chapter,
their luxury.

The old ones
could write
only on the backs
of calendar
pages,
only
the months
gone by,
so they wouldn’t
waste paper.

And faced with
creativity
or thrift, who
wouldn’t choose
water? To sing
while beating
the clothes
with switches
and stones,
to tell stories
behind the plow
of the sister
who came home
late once,
and then
just never came home?