The Patience of Bathtubs
by Nancy Willard
From Swimming Lessons (1996)
I admire the patience of bathtubs,
their humility, their grace under pressure.
I have seen bathtubs like melancholy tureens
into which the moon ladles her light broth.
The saint who sailed from Ireland in a bathtub
found the Blessed Isles, and no wonder.
A strange tub once adopted me, carried me
for hours in its magnificent belly,
gurgled for joy when I pulled the plug,
and filled it—oh, Zen discipline—with emptiness.
How it crouched on four chilly legs,
a snowshoe hare in hiding from hunters
or a white cat willing the wren’s breath
to make a small stir in the hedge,
like that Roman fountain in the Hyde,
marble-mouthed, leaf-lipped, muttering water,
filling the chaste basin with off-color stories
leaving their rusty breath on the streaked stone.
