In just four lines, Bonta makes a quiet, unsettling point about promises. The poem opens with "water of many places," an image that feels fluid and hard to pin down. It could point to the many places oaths get spoken, or to the way water carries things from one spot to another, changing as it goes. Then the oaths themselves arrive: "these words come with arms." That image is physical, almost like being embraced or seized. A vow is not just something said. It grabs hold of you.
The last two lines turn the poem. Oaths "damn us to remember / but not to be faithful." The speaker suggests that a promise can bind our memory without binding our behavior. We can't forget what we swore, but we can still break it. The tone is rueful and a little bleak, as though the speaker knows this from experience, though the poem doesn't say. The mood is hushed and watery, with guilt flowing underneath it.