Water Remembers Where It’s Been
It takes a thousand years for water to
complete its journey around the globe
which means that the snow in your backyard was
once an ocean, and what the first humans touched
now streams in rivulets down mountain cheeks,
now courses through your bloodstream like a song
echoed from long ago, now etches memories of
ancestral sorrow in your throat. This stream I wash
my feet in is the same water my great great great
someone carried from a spring a mile away.
They walked barefoot against the rocky earth,
pressed forward seeking promise, held their
troubles like prayers spilled into a flowing river.
This river up and vapored into the air like a plea
in search of our parched desperation, seeped into
the ground like some fresh hope. All we are is a
single wet breath irrigated from one generation to
the next. One chorus waving to each other from
the invisible ledge between a thousand years,
forever circling back home.
