The Weight of Water

Beverly and I visited the Quabbin Reservoir on Saturday. It’s located in Central Massachusetts and is the water supply for Greater Boston. The reservoir was created in the late thirties by damming the Swift River and letting the valley fill. It was quite an engineering feat. One thing though: four towns were literally dismantled and the populations resettled to make way for its creation. The area around the Quabbin is park land now and home for all kinds of wildlife including eagles, but every time I visit, I think of those towns and how they were erased from the map of Massachusetts by the fine thirsty citizens of Boston. Talk about audacity.

Beneath the Quabbin reservoir, four towns
no longer meet each spring to regulate
their rainbow trout or tax that flow which drowns
the valley in its undercurrent state.

That's the beginning of a work in progress.