One summer in my Cuban childhood

        my paternal grandfather took me

on horseback to check many of the water

wells in the countryside of San Pablo.

        We rode out before the midday heat,

when the scent of melons and squash

drying against scorched earth hung heavy

        and thick in the air. It was a summer

of drought and my grandfather spoke

of waterwells where the water

        to keep the cattle and other animals

alive came from. The first we checked

was next to the henhouse in the shade

        of a bloomed guayaba. A wide

oval-shaped opening in the ground.

only covered by sheets of corrugated

        metal and planks of wood, holes

rusted through, shafts of sunlight

plunging into the dark of the well,

        motes and dust adrift in the air.

Growing up here, all my cousins

and I heard stories of the people

        who'd fallen into these deep wells,

never to be heard from or rescued.

My grandfather checked for water levels

        by dropping a wood bucket or gourd

down beyond where the sunlight shone,

way down in the darkness where,

        after many feet of rope, the thud

and splash of the bucket echoed

like some calling, a ghost of the fallen.

        We were told of the things these wells

claimed, mostly animals like goats,

chickens, a fox, and children, who didn't

        didn't listen always to adults.

And as my grandfather and I traveled

and checked all the wells, I thought

        of these depths, these hollows

of ground and how, if you put your ear

close to dry earth, you could hear faint

        voices, of those who'd succumbed

to the charmed calling of such dark depths.