February 2021

Editor’s Note

Our February authors have me thinking of water.

Water is supple and strong. Nourishing and precarious. Its constant movement erodes—snowmelt in spring, ocean waves breaking on shoreline, or the downpour we see in CG Miller’s writing—where beauty and friction meet.

A watershed helps to direct water, a ridge of land that separates the flow of groundwater into creeks, basins, or oceans. Bill Vernon speaks to the mysteries of water luring a young boy to dream and discover. A place where hopping, slithering, and swimming thrive. Where a night chorus of insects and amphibians remind us there is magic in the world.

I’m also thinking of the transformative power of a watershed moment, like the long-awaited return of a loved one in Stephanie Friedman’s piece—a crossroads where a woman is steadfast in what she wants.

This journal’s name derives from “The Waterwheel” by Rumi, a thirteenth-century Sufi poet. When I first read the poem back in 2015, the lines, “Stay here, quivering with each moment / like a drop of mercury” explained what I wanted readers to experience.

I read Rumi’s poem differently today, after eleven months of the unbelievable stress, exhaustion, and uncertainty endured by so many of us. There’s a greater responsibility to his words, “The waterwheel accepts water / and turns and gives it away, / weeping.”

I speak for all of us at Waterwheel Review when I say, “We accept. We give away. We weep.”

Cheryl Wilder