"Dry Well" - Bahamas AI Art
©A. Derek Catalano
This poem explores the theme of taking things for granted, only realizing their true value when they’re lost. The dry well serves as a metaphor for love, relationships, time, and life's blessings that we often assume will always be there—until they’re gone.
Dry Well
Once, the well was brimming high,
A mirror of the endless sky,
Cool as dusk and deep as time,
A silver thread, a whispered rhyme.
It quenched the lips of those who came,
It knew no thirst, it knew no shame,
A quiet giver, strong, unseen,
A steady hand in fields of green.
Its waters lapped at careless hands,
Soft as silk upon the sands,
Taken freely, day by day,
Never thought to drift away.
But seasons shift and rivers bend,
The kindest currents meet their end,
One day, the rope was lowered deep—
And silence answered, dark and steep.
The pail returned with dust and bone,
A hollow scrape, a weary groan,
No liquid luster, no embrace,
Just echoes in an empty space.
They stood around with hands outstretched,
Knuckles white and faces etched,
Not knowing what they’d lost before—
Not knowing, till there was no more.
The earth had swallowed what it gave,
And left behind an empty grave,
A well so full, so freely bled,
Now sunken, cracked, and parched instead.
They dug in madness, dug in grief,
In disbelief, in vain belief,
But nothing rose to meet the call—
The well was dry, once full of all.
And only then, with lips so burned,
Did wisdom's cruelest truth return:
We do not see, we do not learn,
Until the loss has left us spurned.
Now dust replaces what was sweet,
Now longing lingers at their feet,
And aching hands, and hollow cries—
A well once full, now cauterized.
So drink while waters run their course,
And know the gift before remorse,
For time will take and time will tell—
You’ll miss it most when dry's the well.
©A. Derek Catalano/ChatGPT
