Bodies of Water

i. 

We are water. We are moving, being altered. 

Days pass quickly, information is everywhere  

and nowhere. If you catch me you’ll see 

I’m still running. It’s urgent now.

Water circulates, a global conveyor belt 

between ocean currents.

Exchange of moisture, atmosphere to cavern,

a body in motion, sinuous, like your body. 

What’s in your glass is 4.5 billion years old

give or take, delivered to Earth 

by planetesimals beyond the frost line.

If you’re thirsty it’s still free, for now. 

ii.

When you heat the earth more evaporates 

and more falls, flood and drought, melting ice   

sea rise. All stories are water stories. 

Remembering the way we woke early

back when time was expansive. A collective 

memory. Irreversible succession. Undulations. 

Expectation scented the air like a promise 

nothing would change: river, water, land. 

Promises broken, like marriage vows, 

agreements, accords, bodies. 

iii. 

Time is speeding up. There is evidence.  

Today is the shortest day ever. 

1.59 milliseconds less than yesterday. 

All of which is to say 

water is on the move, altering Earth’s inertia 

another second of melting, adding up 

to a lifetime, a generation, a species. 

We are changing the atmosphere. 

Is it something to be proud of: these big hungry 

primate brains and all they are capable of?  

Cerebral matter does not fossilise 

it deteriorates, leaving no trace. 

I want to forgive, but I too am a mother. 

All this rogue growth, how we reach so hard

stuffing every toy into curious mouths

wanting to be first in the queue, belly full. 

Heads you lose. Wind against water, waves 

beating the shore, each break slightly different. 

There is no such thing as silence, no time, we are 

here now, making a story that will be told 

to someone or something, phase change,

the tipping point, if telling survives.