You Humanly Useful Thing

This collection of water
Is ready to shrink or grow,
Add additional life forms

Or lose them. It’s been a ghost
More than once before. Recall
That fall the whole pond drained out

And became a muddy bowl
Quickly colonized by grass—
The ghost of a reservoir.

Recall the spring the freshet
Drowned the boat ramp and the bridge—
Monster of a reservoir.

That’s all ghosts and monsters are—
Absence you sense as absence,
A presence that’s too present.

What’s the tidy in-between?
This humanly useful thing,
Not haunting, not threatening.