No one in the folk-lore sense climbs to the top of a hill for water unless that water has a special significance. -Lewis Spence
Something, then--a stain on her dress,
a bee in her bonnet, the last stick
of gum unshared--something has been
left out. Perhaps he wasn't all he's been
cracked up to be. On this point
the text is clearly ambiguous.
But you're not going to tell me
Jack simply "fell" down. Okay,
let's say she never actually pushed him.
The word fell is the ticket here.
Fell: fierce. Fell, closely echoing
fail. Jack failed to find water.
He failed fiercely, the way they do.
I'm not saying I don't sympathize.
But you can't overlook the fact
that fell slant-rhymes ever so wantonly
with Jill, suggesting that Jack has connected Jill and fail
inextricably in his man-mind,
that feckless projector of choppy
home movies where the heads
of the beloved are cut off,
their least fetching sides exposed.
So if Jack is the determinist hero
of Jill's self-actualized world-view,
it follows that Jack was not totally
at fault in his wish-fulfilling
falling. It is readily inferable
that what really went down
was Jack's confidence in his
water-finding abilities:
a slip of the old divining rod,
a "tumble" curtailed. Of course
we can only speculate.
