This well shaft (not the well)
its walls green with moss and fern
seems never to have been used to draw
water from the well but tells
of wet caves undisturbed by human need
to mine that it is a way to.

It smells like dank cellars containing
mystery but not leading to it (as words
which seem to hide some spell within them)
held by water which is the secret lying
unrevealed in its darkness but

Discovered when a stone fell and a faint
splash proved what I could already tell
(as with words which both mystify and point
beyond themselves to things) that water
heard in an empty shell sang of the sea
or unheard at the shaft’s end was divined

Well enough for there to be no secret
to tell to anyone who knew wells
so even the absence of a bucket
hanging like a bell in a belfry
(too visual an image) did not mislead
or have no useful story to tell.