Neil Fulwood- A Poem

Water Cooler

 

Historically they meant something,

these givers of life, these wellings-up.

The source of the Nile, the fountain

of youth, the murky patch of damp

clawed from the desert by Cable Hogue.

 

Now it’s a water cooler, plumbed

into a corridor or corner of the office,

fluoridated dispenser calling to worship

lead-swingers, gossipers, early-swervers,

purveyors of office politics: it’s the source

 

of cheap talk, the fountain of untruth.