A Kinship with Water

A Kinship with Water

"If the millions of women who haul water
 for long distances had a faucet by their door,
 whole societies could be transformed."
                   -- Tina Rosenberg


There are poems that tell us how water rises
as mist, and returns again to rivers and rooftops
as music, or as a white calligraphy of snow.

Shapeshifter, water  fills our glassware
and our gutters alike, disguising itself as birds,
or dogs, or elephants and tigers drinking

from the same shallow pool.  It manifests
as boys on a soccer field, as coffee in cups,
in wadis and in gardens.

There are words that say: sweet water,
bad water, holy water, words that whisper of
water flowing into baptismal fonts, where our sins

 float away like fat turds, or where hidden water
 runs under cities in sewers, or as ice-sheets
 melting at 0.7 millimeters per year, warming

the currents of our rising oceans.
Are we not, ourselves, made of water,
our cells swollen and wet, our blood

a red tide that follows the moon, knowing
kinship with  desert women hauling water
long distances, thirsting, measuring, each drop?



jed 6-2-12