my riff off of York’s A Natural History of Mississippi (p. 26)
The Natural Order of Things
A touch of blue from the clouds
and from the lake a ripple that rolls
the water into receptacles, swamps,
refineries, and rivers until each vessel
reaches full pool. Water always
needs controlling, holding back
or calling forth, repelling by roofs
and umbrellas, irrigating by farmers,
turning on and off with twists of a knob.
Long ago, it became so rambunctious
that it spit us onto land, reviled
by our complaints about the over-
abundance of salt and the shortage of sushi.
It did not really need us for anything,
but we could not survive without it.
So we devised ways to make it
work for us, rather than admit to it
how much we appreciated its cradle of love.
We sat on it in ships, we bridged it with
girders and bottled it for drink, even
dredged it for sand. For the duration,
it has patiently succumbed to our clumsy
attempts to color and shape it to what
we think it should be. But water reserves
its capacity to remind us, every now
and then, who is boss. After all,
it runs in our veins. One day, maybe
we will reconcile our differences.
Until then, water remains our ambivalent friend.
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