Water-Poem

(Still somewhat work in progress)

When water finds no rest it goes chasing, goes running, goes racing, then it gathers up into great rivulets, great rivers, great floods; it goes tearing down house after house, town after town, and finding no rest, nourishes not the meadows and hills, flows not gently ‘twixt tree and meadow, ‘twixt meadow and tree. But when water stays in one place, then does it sink deep, then does it gather up underneath the earth to nourish the villages, the fields, the meadows and the hills; then does it well up, spring up, spring forth as clean springs, then does it furnish a dwelling-place for watercress and esculent nettles. Likewise, the one not loving themself shall find no rest. Restless they chase, go running, go racing; they gather up their strength into great rivulets, great rivers, great floods; they go into the world, constantly trying to enact their plans, petty or grand; and finding no rest, nowhere to rest, they nourish not the villages, nourish not the fields, the meadows and the hills.

Water that chases, might chase further into the mountains for a time, but always downhill, always lakeward, always seaward, always oceanward it chases; down, down toward the gaping abyss, toward the gaping darkness it chases the depths. Tarry and sink, tarry and sink where you are, O good water! Nourish the hills and soften the earth where you sit; be an oak, be a ramp, be a maple, be an ash! Be a sedge, a little bluestem, a mountain’s-hair-grass, a Cladonia, an Umbilicaria, a blueberry, a wintergreen, a cucumber-root, a springtail’s rustling, and a millipede’s neverending clomping! Be a cupful, a pailful of water good for drinking, good for boiling, good for washing; be a spring furnishing nettles, furnishing mushrooms of many sorts—chanterelles and boletes and milky-caps and brick-caps; be the berry from a ginseng-root, the dewdrop from a cohosh-leaf, a muddy seep for toothwort and avens; a yellow birch of the mountain, a red oak of the hill; be the witch-hazel, the dogwood, the clematis, the bergamot good of taste, the yarrow good for blood, the goldenrod, good meadow’s gold! Be the sweet-blossomed milkweed, the sweet-rooted lily, the starch-rooted parsnip, the stout-rooted potato of the field; be the shiny ripening flint-corn, the white-blue of the rye-corn, the fattening of the wheat-corn in the meadows soaking, up in the grain-fields growing! Be clear water, cold water, pure water; be fish-swimming water, clear good water, broad beaver-water, reed-canary-water, sedge-water, iris-water, watercress-water; be frog-water, be sweet-flag-water, muskrat-water, turtle-water, trout-water, crayfish-water, water-snake-water, sculpin-water, mayfly-water, cattisfly-water, damselfly-water, dragonfly-water! Be the broad and unhurried, the deep and lazy river-water, the deep-bellied river bottom where quick-tailed trout make their homes; be the deep cool marsh-water, the manna-grass-water, the willow-water at the beaver’s dam, the cherry-water, the elderberry-water at the river’s edge; be the hops-vine, the ground-elder, the plum-wood’s blossoming! Tarry, O beloved water; tarry and sink where you are, and do not go any further chasing, chasing to mud, chasing to sullied rivulet, chasing to sullied flood, not down, down into the gaping darkness, down into the gaping abyss! Sully yourself not with mud from the chasing, filth from the slithering, silt from the racing—no! Tarry where you sit, tarry and sink, good water, O water beloved by all; go not chasing, go not slithering, go not racing down, down into the gaping darkness—stay here, O water, O pure water, clear water, here in the mountain lands, here in the land where the thrush sings, where the meadow-rue blooms!

And be like clear water, the water good for drinking, good for cooking, good for washing; the water that nourishes the oaks, the hickories, the mountain’s-hair-grass, the sedge, the cinquefoil, the Cladonia, the Umbilicaria, the blueberries, the barberries of the hill; be like the water that nourishes black birch, the white birch, the hillside honeysuckles and berries, the spruces and hemlocks and pines, the maples and ashes and hop-hornbeams and butternuts; the water sucked up into maple-bark, into sycamore-bark, into willow-bark, into alder-bark, into hazel-bark, into witch-hazel-bark, into cherry-bark, into dogwood-bark, into ninebark-bark, into bramble-bark, into rose-bark and nannyberry-bark and cranberry-bark, into basswood-bark and basswood-leaf; be like the water that grows the ginseng-root and the cohosh-root, the water that grows the ramps and the toothwort and the nettle and the saxifrage and the speedwell and the partridgeberry and the meadow-rue and the windflower and the wood-anemone and the nightshade and the mustard and the milkweed good to eat; the dame’s-rocket and the goldenrod and the yarrow and the boneset and the joe-pye-plant and the bindweed and the orchard-grass and the bluegrass and the little-bluestem-grass and the meosh-grass and the bottlebrush-grass and the bergamot-good-to-taste and the poke, the lady’s-slipper and the showy orchis and the helleborine! Be like the good water that waters the June beetle, the moths great and small, the ever-clomping millipede, the sonorous bumblebee, the meadow-loving honeybee, and all the small bees; be like the clear water that waters the bark-beetle, the aphid, the caterpillar, the inchworm, the butterfly, the murmuring springtail, the gregarious ant, the hoverfly, the beautiful hawkmoth, the mayfly, the cattisfly, the marsh-worm, the meadow-worm, the mountain-worm! Be like the pure water that waters the deer, the moose, the rabbit, the squirrel, the fisher, the mink, the coyote, the dog, the bobcat, the housecat, the lion, the wolf, the bat, the mouse, the vole, the mole, the humans in their villages; be like the water that waters the crayfish, the toad, the water-frog, the tree-frog, the salamander, the turtle, the serpent so close-bound to the earth; yes! Like a gentle rain of clear water watering all beings equally and useful for every cause, like a clear mountain spring good for all beings be; like a clear spring fed by groundwater, by slow earth-sunken water be; like clear water in its nourishing of all grounds become, and spring up, spring forth, spill over, O dearest water, O god of life!—spring up, spill forth, by your own goodness and magnetism concentrate yourself like water concentrating, forming a spring, springing up, springing forth, spilling over, softening the earth and nourishing all beings! O water, beloved of all, being of two natures—the rushing flood and the nourishing spring—be the latter; spring up from the rocky earth, the pebbly mountain-spring, the muddy seep, the venerable headwaters; be the gentle one, brought forth by love, cool and calm like the earth, brought forth from the depths of the earth, mother of all things!

Just like water is kind—may you, O water, O god incarnate, be kind: kind like the spilling-over spring, like the vast sheets of rain, merging with thing after thing, soaking into this earth and that, this field and that mead, this wood and that glade; all mouths are not rejected by you. Even enemies are united as water: their blood is of one source, one substance, for although they seem opposed to one another, they are in substance the same.

When water is deep and not shallow, you can dip a cup or a pail in; there, the mountain trout find their home, and a multitude of animals come to drink. Where the water pools up in hollows and vernal pools, it soaks, soaks into the earth and nourishes the honeysuckle, the squirrel-corn, the spruces, the firs; there, the frogs come to lay their eggs; it softens the earth, and the myriad herbs come to flourish. Why be shallow when you can be deep? Why be sheet erosion when you can be the nourishing seep? Even the shrubs of the driest ridges, make the juiciest fruit; the hawthorn, the blueberry, the cactus of the sandy places; the serviceberry in the oaken-woods, the barberry, growing on but little stone, and the gooseberry too, shaping sweet fruit of lichens and sparse grasses alone. Be now the water which fruits on those ridges, sweet; be now the water which bears for good beings to eat, those beings to be watered and fed by the poorest of the herbs, those scant-mountain-rain-sippers, the stone-eaters and the frost-nibblers. Would you think the barberry a frugal being, who makes succulent fruit in the places where drops are few? Extravagant in the taking and extravagant in the giving he is, a master of rain and sun and stone; no meager ninebark at the river’s edge, no carp’s snacking of the wooly willow’s dropping. See!—even the poorest among the plants loves themself and gives yet a seed-laden fruit. How much more so the apples and grapes out in the black meadow, the cherry and plum by the river’s edge? And yet even the barberry is like a spring, a holy water-fount; from drops to bear a smattering of red fruit, fruit well to be eaten, well to be had—how much more so an apple-tree by the waterside, the greatest of the fruiting trees, sweet cider-fount, sweet pie-giver, not wasting the water of the earth? Just as the barberry, drinking deep, makes bright fruit for the eating, withhold no kindness for the sake of the chasing, the running, and the racing; is it not enough just to be—here? To, a human being, soak in the waters which come your way and be fruitful, to withhold from yourself no love, no scrap of kindness; and may it be shared outward, shone outward, with extravagance, like earth that has been well soaked, welling up, springing forth, seeping as a seep, springing as a spring. Like a barberry in the thin places swell; like a gooseberry from a rocky ledge sprawl laden; like an apple-tree in the black meadow, each bearing their own fruit according to their kind—like them may you soak, alive.