It’s a myth, some say that salamanders
Prove the water table.
Yet I still seek that speckled affirmation
Lifting the well’s heavy lid to see them squirming
From the light.
Years ago, in winters like this, we dropped a heater down
The old well’s pit to forestall freezing.
Salamanders were fire-proof so we’d been told.
Those tales exist for a reason
Beyond art or science. A comfort somehow to think
That these regenerative amphibians
Are the Praetorian guard of sand-point wells.
Conducting subterranean inspections
Of water flow, of purity,
Assessors of goodness and plenty.