Considering Water:
I settled deep into my body
feeling my way into prayer
for the waters of Japan.
And the waters there, so injured
by the radiation they have absorbed
while helping humans harness atomic energy
to power all manner of uses,
both good and of dubious value,
echoed my prayer for their healing
back to me, still in prayer, in my body.
The echoes touched the waters of my body,
and spoke what my body already knew
about the waters of Japan:
all the waters of earth
are part of each other
in cycles and patterns of time
I can barely understand
with my mind.
The waters know beyond our knowings.
The waters of Japan and the waters of my body
know themselves as all one Belonging.
When one is injured or damaged,
all of them are together in carrying it,
sharing it,
serving as lifeblood in us
as in the entire body
of Gaia, our home planet.
I prayed my feeble apology
for what we do to injure water,
which is us and on which our lives depend.
The waters absorbed my apology
as they have absorbed all the poisons,
and a knowing filled up in me
as if I were a cup for water,
and this knowing became very loud,
and shrill as an evacuation siren,
a dire sound, urgent,
warning me,
and the finger of it pointed to
HANFORD.
Years’ long awareness of its time-bomb dangers
have not changed our knowing
into action to care for its spreading poisons,
actions which could save our lives,
or which could have,
if taken in time,
if we had not relied
on empty promises
of our immobilized governments
if all of us had joined together
in unity as the waters are,
if we had learned to act together,
to work out healing of the earth
in time.
The waters of Japan, in my body, ask urgently,
Will you act
in time?!!!
Carol Bosworth is frequently surprised by important messages in poetry, her own or others. She lives as a semi-hermit, lodged within a retirement community and also in the active community of West Hills Friends Church, Portland, OR.
This poem was first published in Chapter 8 of Minding the Light (mindingthelight.org), a project of West Hill Friends Church.