1. Deep Water - written by Ron Rash
From Raising the Dead. Published in 2002. Read 764 times on American Poems.

The night smoothes out its black tarp,
tacks it to the sky with stars.
Lake waves slap the bank, define
a shoreline as one man casts
his seine into the unseen,
lifts the net's pale bloom, lets spill
of threadfin fill the live well.
Soon that squared... (Read full poem)

Black lake, black boat, two black, cut-paper people.
Where do the black trees go that drink here?
Their shadows must cover Canada.

A little light is filtering from the water flowers.
Their leaves do not wish us to hurry:
They are round and flat and... (Read full poem)

3. The Eye - written by Robinson Jeffers
Read 1100 times on American Poems.

The Atlantic is a stormy moat; and the Mediterranean,
The blue pool in the old garden,
More than five thousand years has drunk sacrifice
Of ships and blood, and shines in the sun; but here the Pacific--
Our ships, planes, wars are perfectly... (Read full poem)

Softly the water ripples
Against the canoe's curving side,
Softly the birch trees rustle
Flinging over us branches wide.
Softly the moon glints and glistens
As the water takes and leaves,
Like golden ears of corn
Which fall from loose-bound... (Read full poem)

5. Water Music - written by Robert Creeley
Read 2732 times on American Poems.

The words are a beautiful music.
The words bounce like in water.

Water music,
loud in the clearing

off the boats,
birds, leaves.

They look for a place
to sit and eat--

no meaning,
no point.(Read full poem)

Look, look, master, here comes two religious caterpillars.

The Jew of Malta.

POLYPHILOPROGENITIVE
The sapient sutlers of the Lord
Drift across the window-panes.
In the beginning was the Word.

In the beginning was the Word.
Superfetation of ,
And... (Read full poem)

7. One Lonely Afternoon - written by Russell Edson
Read 1136 times on American Poems.

Since the fern can't go to the sink for a drink of
water, I graciously submit myself to the task, bringing two
glasses from the sink.
  And so we sit, the fern and I, sipping water together.


  Of course I'm more complex than a fern, full of... (Read full poem)

So early it's still almost dark out.
I'm near the window with coffee,
and the usual early morning stuff
that passes for thought.

When I see the boy and his friend
walking up the road
to deliver the newspaper.

They wear caps and sweaters,
and one... (Read full poem)

9. Water - written by Wendell Berry
From Farming: A Handbook. Published in 1970. Read 1632 times on American Poems.

I was born in a drouth year.  That summer
my mother waited in the house, enclosed
in the sun and the dry ceaseless wind,
for the men to come back in the evenings,
bringing water from a distant spring.
veins of leaves ran dry, roots shrank.
And... (Read full poem)

If you have forgotten water lilies floating
On a dark lake among mountains in the afternoon shade,
If you have forgotten their wet, sleepy fragrance,
Then you can return and not be afraid.

But if you remember, then turn away forever
To the plains... (Read full poem)

11. A Paumanok Picture. - written by Walt Whitman
From Leaves of Grass. Published in 1900. Read 1981 times on American Poems.

TWO boats with nets lying off the sea-beach, quite still, 
Ten fishermen waiting—they discover a thick school of mossbonkers—they drop the
	join’d seine-ends in the water, 
The boats separate and row off, each on its rounding course... (Read full poem)

Not the moon. A flower
on the other side of the water.

The water sweeps past in flood,
dragging a whole tree by the hair,

a barn, a bridge. The flower
sings on the far bank.

Not a flower, a bird calling
hidden among the darkest trees, music

over... (Read full poem)

13. Boy at the Window - written by Richard Wilbur
Read 4863 times on American Poems.

Seeing the snowman standing all alone
In dusk and cold is more than he can bear.
The small boy weeps to hear the wind prepare
A night of gnashings and enormous moan.
His tearful sight can hardly reach to where
The pale-faced figure with bitumen... (Read full poem)

a pretty a day
(and every fades)
is here and away
(but born are maids
to flower an hour
in all,all)

o yes to flower
until so blithe
a doer a wooer
some limber and lithe
some very fine mower
a tall;tall

some jerry so very
(and nellie... (Read full poem)

15. The Idea Of Order At Key West - written by Wallace Stevens
Read 4671 times on American Poems.

She sang beyond the genius of the sea.
The water never formed to mind or voice,
Like a body wholly body, fluttering
Its empty sleeves; and yet its mimic motion
Made constant cry, caused constantly a cry,
That was not ours although we... (Read full poem)

Gushing from the mouths of stone men
To spread at ease under the sky
In granite-lipped basins,
Where iris dabble their feet
And rustle to a passing wind,
The water fills the garden with its rushing,
In the midst of the quiet of close-clipped... (Read full poem)

17. Well Water - written by Randall Jarrell
Read 1637 times on American Poems.

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... (Read full poem)

I even hear the mountains
the way they laugh
up and down their blue sides
and down in the water
the fish cry
and the water 
is their tears.
I listen to the water
on nights I drink away
and the sadness becomes so great
I hear it in my clock
it... (Read full poem)

19. Death Valley Pupfish - written by Jenny Factor
Read 445 times on American Poems.

Nevertheless,
the blind pupfish burst open
into the sometime stream,

dodging pebbles,
wiggling away from shadows,
darting back and forth
through the dusty water.

I wonder
how many eggs
lie waiting in places
the water never... (Read full poem)

Others taught me with having knelt at well-curbs
Always wrong to the light, so never seeing
Deeper down in the well than where the water
Gives me back in a shining surface picture
Me myself in the summer heaven godlike
Looking out of a wreath... (Read full poem)

21. The Sad Message - written by Russell Edson
From Ploughshares. Read 1684 times on American Poems.

The Captain becomes moody at sea. He's
afraid of water; such bully amounts that prove the
seas. . . 

  A glass of water is one thing. A man easily downs
it, capturing its menace in his bladder; pissing it
away. A few drops of rain do little harm,... (Read full poem)

A serious moment for the water is 
 when it boils
And though one usually regards it
 merely as a convenience
To have the boiling water
 available for bath or table
Occasionally there is someone
around who understands
The importance of this moment... (Read full poem)

23. The Sleepers - written by Sylvia Plath
From The Collected Poems. Published in 1959. Read 3374 times on American Poems.

No map traces the street
Where those two sleepers are.
We have lost track of it.
They lie as if under water
In a blue, unchanging light,
The French window ajar

Curtained with yellow lace.
Through the narrow crack
Odors of wet earth rise.
The snail... (Read full poem)

In the brown water,
Thick and silver-sheened in the sunshine,
Liquid and cool in the shade of the reeds,
A pike dozed.
Lost among the shadows of stems
He lay unnoticed.
Suddenly he flicked his tail,
And a green-and-copper brightness
Ran... (Read full poem)

25. The Maldive Shark - written by Herman Melville
Read 2214 times on American Poems.

About the Shark, phlegmatical one,
Pale sot of the Maldive sea,
The sleek little pilot-fish, azure and slim,
How alert in attendance be.
From his saw-pit of mouth, from his charnel of maw,
They have nothing of harm to dread,
But liquidly glide... (Read full poem)