Water
The freshwater body as a recurring image: the lake as a pastoral refuge or scenic backdrop, the swimming pool as bounded play, the flood as a current that carries everything off, and the bare "I am water" figure where the speaker becomes the element itself. Still freshwater stands for a place set apart from the world, or the place where the poetry got made. The pool is bounded play, often tied to intimacy, summer transgression or surrender. The flood is an overwhelming current the speaker decides to let carry her. And the speaker-as-water figure is the moment she stops resisting and takes the shape of whoever enters her life. It is kept separate from the sea (the catalogue's image for salt, ship, shore and ocean depth) and from drowning (the inner experience of being swallowed by water); this motif holds the freshwater body and the elemental figure it produces.
Water holds refuge and yielding together. The freshwater body marks a space apart from the world; the elemental figure registers the speaker's own state as fluid, taking the shape of what enters her. At the lake it usually carries the Romantic association behind the lakes - water as the place artists retreat to in order to recover what the world has cost them, and a lineage the speaker asks to join when she names the geography. At the pool it is bounded play, often paired with surrender or a seasonal dare (the iced-over winter pool, the jump from the balcony, the swim out past where your feet can touch). At the flood it is a current she chooses to be carried by, usually as the act of letting go of what the relationship was. The speaker-as-water figure marks the point where resistance ends and she becomes the medium itself.
Appears in 12 songs
“Take me to the Lakes where all the poets went to die”
the lakes function as the song's organising image, the literary-historical refuge the speaker asks to be taken to, and the geography against which the modernity she is fleeing (the hunters with cell phones, the namedropping sleaze) is implicitly measured.
“while I bathe in cliffside pools”
The cliffside pool extends the lakes' refuge register to the speaker's own body, bathing in remote freshwater as physical inhabitation of the withdrawal the song proposes.
“Long limbs and frozen swims You'd always go past where our feet could touch”
The frozen swims serve as the vehicle for Marjorie's life lessons, bravery, daring, willingness to go into uncomfortable territory. Going past where feet could touch demonstrates the grandmother's courage and her role as guide.
“Feet in the swing over the creek”
The creek is a boundary between safety and adventure, a small freshwater body that represents the threshold between what the child knows and what she fears. It is also a symbol of memory itself, flowing water that looks the same but is never the same.
“Running like water, I”
Water as the medium of memory's flow and James's departure, 'running like water' captures both the unstoppable quality of his leaving and the river-like flow of Betty's memories.
“Do you remember, we were sitting there by the water?”
The first of three by-the-water lines anchoring the song's memory work. The water is the shared geography the speaker invokes to test the partner's recall, evidence that a relationship was real because it was located.
“Do you remember all the city lights on the water?”
The water reflects the city back, and the line treats the doubled image as proof. The lyric leans on the visual layering, city above, city below, to argue for the durability of what's being remembered.
“You said, 'I remember how we felt sitting by the water'”
The partner's recall answers the speaker's question. The water moves from prompt to confirmation, becoming the agreed-on landmark of the relationship's beginning.
“The rivers I cried when we said goodbye”
The rivers of tears represent the overwhelming grief of separation, the intensity of the loss expressed through hyperbolic water imagery.
“We used to watch the sun go down on the boats in the water”
Water as the surface a happy past was lit from. The line sits inside the song's catalogue of small remembered scenes: the boats, the water, the sun going down, physical details the speaker uses to mark a relationship by where it was witnessed.
“Roaring twenties, tossing pennies in the pool”
Pool as nostalgia prop. The image draws on a pre-war American leisure register, the wishing-pool, the coin-toss, and the song uses it to locate a kind of love belonging to a decade the speaker can only imagine inhabiting.
“In the winter in the icy outdoor pool, when you jumped in first, I went in too”
Cold water as the test the partner went into first. One of the song's bids for proof-of-love: the speaker followed not because the water was inviting but because the partner had already entered.
“Jump into the pool from the balcony”
Pool as a venue for the song's catalogue of glamour-and-ruin. The image is consequence-free spectacle: high, controlled risk, an audience implicit. Water makes the jump entertainment rather than catastrophe.
“Let the flood carry away all my pictures of you”
The flood is water as cleansing, the deluge that washes the images of the lover away. Uncle Jerry sets it in the wider run of water through the song, rain and flood as rebirth and the start of new life.
“The moon like a spotlight on the lake”
The catalogue's earliest freshwater image, and the song's first move into atmosphere. The moon turns the lake into a stage, a body of water working as a screen for the memory the speaker is about to retrieve.