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Ode to the Zeer

Across the Sahel states, the humble zeer,
A pear-shaped or full-bellied earthen pot
Strains muddy water, turns it cool and clear
Beneath a tree or other shady spot.
Constructed from alluvium and clay,
It’s reddish-ochre hue’s a welcome sight
To travellers and thirsty passers-by,
Or mosque-bound Muslims hastening on their way
At prayer-time ’neath the desiccating might
Of cyclops Sun, pulsating in the sky.

Held upright, in a flimsy metal stand,
We find our zeer, its tapered mouth agasp,
But stoppered by a makeshift wooden lid –
A barrier, proclaiming flies are banned.
Atop it sits a cup for hands to clasp
And dip inside, as ancient hands once did.
Evaporating moisture is the key,
The zeer reveals. Its sweating outer skin,
Part green with algae, keeps the water free
From outside heat, yet quenching-cool within

First published in Songs of Eretz Poetry Review

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Paul A. Freeman is the author of Rumours of Ophir, a crime novel which was taught in Zimbabwean high schools and has been translated into German. In addition to having two novels, a children’s book and an 18,000-word narrative poem (Robin Hood and Friar Tuck: Zombie Killers!) commercially published, Paul is the author of hundreds of published short stories, poems and articles.

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14 Responses

  1. Roy Eugene Peterson

    This informative poem on the “zeer” is beautifully worded and written with precision and wonderful rhyme. I greatly appreciated the two personal pictures of such water pots as perfect replacements for any other notes to the poem rending such notes unnecessary. “The Sahel states” completely provides the setting, and your pictures speak to your personal experiences. I particularly liked the phrase, “cyclops Sun.” I felt the heat from the desert and the cooling water, since I have worked in 120-degree heat in West Texas summers with nothing to cool me down, except an occasional drink shared from an aluminum can with dipper shared with other workmen.

    Reply
    • Paul A. Freeman

      Thanks for your positive comments, Roy, and for sharing your West Texas experience where high temperatures are a uniting phenomenon. Just the number 120 (degrees F) is enough to make me run for a glass of water.

      Reply
  2. Margaret Coats

    Makes sense, Paul. The heat energy of the cyclops sun is used to evaporate moisture that seeps through the porous earthenware zeer, thus cooling the exterior a bit and making it an insulating barrier that actually cools the water inside because all heat transfer goes in the inside-to-outside direction. Wouldn’t have guessed it. Thanks for the carefully detailed description, the thermodynamic explanation, and the revelation of welcome social effects. And in a nice ten-line ode stanza too!

    Reply
    • Paul A. Freeman

      When I was first in Sudan, George Bush had been there shortly before, and brought in a planeload of water in addition to Air Force One. I suppose it’s reasonable to be suspicious of water sources, though I soon got used to stopping at zeers for a top up.

      Reply
  3. Shamik Banerjee

    There are so many things worth mentioning in this remarkable. First, the mirroring rhyme scheme in the stanzas: ABABCDECDE : FGHFGHIJIJ. Secondly, the intricate details about the pot: its shape, the materials used for its manufacturing, its colour, the places where it’s often found, the barrie keeping flies away, etc. Thirdly, the subtle presence of summer and its scorching heat throughout the piece: mosque-bound finding great relief from the zeer, the cyclops sun. And fourth (although not the least) is the fact that of so many things that can grip one’s sight when outside, this little plump pot caught your attention, Mr. Freeman and you wrote this wonderful ode. A clay-made thing dousing the fire of so many throats, truly deserved an ode. Thank you so much for writing and sharing it with us. God bless!

    Reply
    • Paul A. Freeman

      Thanks for reading and commenting, Shamik. I’m glad you mentioned the mirroring rhyme. I wasn’t sure what would be made of this.

      When I go out walking, I’m always on the lookout for lesser topics to write about. It’s amazing what you miss if you’re eyes forward marching or driving about in a car.

      Reply
  4. James A. Tweedie

    Besides the loveliness of the poem itself (and the loveliness of the physics involved–the same basis as a car radiator) is the loveliness of a community offering this life-giving refreshment as a gift to be shared by all. We often see something similar with dog-dish water placed outside small businesses and the presence of public water fountains, many of the latter now disabled out of concerns for public health.

    Thanks, Paul, for the thirst quenching tale.

    Reply
    • Paul Freeman

      You’re most welcome, James. It is indeed unfortunate that the public water fountains of old are gone, replaced by the option of overpriced bottled water from stores unless you carry a canteen. .

      Reply
  5. Joseph S. Salemi

    An interesting poem on an unusual subject. I like the interweaving of an ABBA rhyme scheme with an ABCABC one. Also, this piece proves that a good poem does NOT have to be emotional or sentiment-soaked. It can be purely informative.

    The poem mentions that the zeer is filled with muddy water, but that the water naturally clears itself as it stands, becoming both cool and potable. Reservoir maintenance crews and sewage plant workers say that this is characteristic of all water — if it is allowed to stand, impurities will sink to the bottom, and the water will be pure enough to drink, or be released into water mains, or channeled back into the sea.

    Reply
    • Paul A. Freeman

      Thanks for taking the time to reply in such detail.

      Back in the 80s, I visited a village north of Khartoum. It was about half a kilometer from the Nile, and the women of the village used to collect mud-laden water from the river every morning, carry it back to their adobe homes and tip it into domestic zeer pots to clarify.

      I also recall that the Nile was clean enough to drink out of back then.

      Reply
  6. Margaret Coats

    Paul, no reason to be concerned what one might think of your ode rhyme scheme. It’s the scheme Keats is said to have recommended for an English ode, though none of his use it. That’s why I called your ababcdecde rhyme a “nice ten-line ode stanza.” Keats would, however, suppose three stanzas, harking back to the tradition of Greek dramatic odes with a part sung by a chorus from one side of the stage, then from the other, and concluding with a third portion from center stage. Susan Jarvis Bryant uses such an English ode form in her “Ode to Spring,” with rhymes sounds changing from stanza to stanza, as yours do here (Shamik Banerjee is correct to use different letters for rhymes in the second stanza. I think a two-stanza English “Ode to the Zeer” appropriate for what you in the first line call a “humble” subject. Appropriate as well to use plain rather than the elevated diction usually characteristic of an ode.

    The second stanza, I would say, does not mirror the first, but develops it by further explanation. That could be called a magnifying glass. Since a mirror reverses an image,

    ababcdecde might become cdecdeabab,

    or something similar when reflected. An interesting poetic technique, but so rare I don’t remember seeing it from stanza to stanza. Within stanza, schemes like abccba or abcddcba could be called “mirroring.”

    Reply
    • Paul A. Freeman

      Thanks for reading and leaving such a detailed comment.

      Originally, this poem was in answer to a prompt in a poetry magazine citing Keats’s ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’.

      My first stanza has the same rhyme scheme as Keats’s, but realising I wasn’t going beyond two distinctive stanzas, and after a happy accident (I had already started the second stanza, but with the rhyme scheme of last six lines’ of the first stanza), I decided to completely reverse the rhyme scheme.

      I’ll check out Susan’s ‘Ode to Spring’ and see what I can come up with here in Mauritania. Although I’m a bit of a sonneteer, ‘sonnets doth not a poet make’.

      By the way, I was watching a documentary on NHK, a Japanese channel, and thought of you when I saw a ‘forests’ documentary by Peter Barakan – he was foraging.

      Six of Barakan’s documentaries are featured here:

      https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/shows/barakandiscovers/

      Thanks again for reading.

      Reply
  7. Jeff Eardley

    Most enjoyable to read Paul. I love “ The desiccating might of cyclops Sun, pulsating in the sky.” I enjoy poetry that educates and informs and I now know all about the Zeer. Absolutely well done with this one.

    Reply
    • Paul A. Freeman

      Thanks for reading and commenting, Jeff. I’m glad you enjoyed the poem.

      Reply

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