Well Water

By Randall Jarrell

What a girl called "the dailiness of life"

(Adding an errand to your errand.  Saying,

"Since you're up . . ." Making you a means to

A means to a means to) is well water

Pumped from an old well at the bottom of the world.

The pump you pump the water from is rusty

And hard to move and absurd, a squirrel-wheel

A sick squirrel turns slowly, through the sunny

Inexorable hours.  And yet sometimes

The wheel turns of its own weight, the rusty

Pump pumps over your sweating face the clear

Water, cold, so cold! you cup your hands

And gulp from them the dailiness of life.