Saturday, June 22, 2013

POEM - Born of Water

It is in water I feel
Feel and nourish something inside
Something called at times primordial
But I am assigning a different classification
In my determination
Based on intrinsic evidence
I say it comes from my heritage

My blood flows in waves
Drawn from West Coast dwellers
They swam in ocean waters
Breathed of the salt soaked air
Buried themselves willingly in the surf
Drank deeply from salinized aquifers

Other parts of me flow and meander
Follow a serpentine path
Cutting through the landscape
Floating on like spinning leaves
Upon fresh water rivers and streams
These were people of the interior
Who would float or fly
Upon land locked lakes
In boats or upon skis

I have read the scientific facts
The human body
Like the earth
Is about 70 percent water
In my family it is more
Just enough that we need water

We ended up in the desert once
It never fit right
We had to obtained life support
Artificial and chlorinated
But it was water and it was enough
At least my mom said it was enough
It helped her survive the dryness

When I finally moved to the South
I was warned it was humid
That I would never survive
After being in the desert
I don’t know how I survived
As long as I did
Without the humidity
Where there were no natural lakes
Where rivers flowed only semi-annually
And the winds arrived so thirsty
After crossing the Rocky Mountains
That they steal all moisture
Rip it from the desert
And all who dwell therein
Only to drop it in California

So we went to the river today
To stand in the water
Wild water the teems with life
That’s the stuff that matters
Makes its way back into me
Fills in the dry spots in my cells
Ends the drought

            That the desert made in me



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