I am water. I am every drop there is, the seven seas, the flowing rivers and the languid lakes. I am the harnessed water which pours from your taps. I am the floodwaters, the cloudbursts, the gentle showers. I am the condensation on your windows and the glossy dewdrops on the morning blooms.
I am mercurial, I give, I take, I avenge, I renege.
I watch as you hoard me in reservoirs and tanks, I smile as you sail me and plunder my salty depths. I permit you to push me through pipes and conduits, and humour you as you halt my flow with your stopcocks and plugs, taps and washers.
You waste me, I shrug, you drink me, I flow right through you, you pollute me and I become pure again. I allow all this with the benevolence of a loving father.
Conversely, I can strike and destroy with the ease and strength of an avenging angel.
Last Saturday.
A man in his fishing boat, on a mild and gentle sea as green as young wheat, as calm as prayer.
He leaned over the side of his boat, bending to pull in his net, I swelled to meet him. I embraced his outstretched arms like a long lost lover, my silver edges running like fleas up his thick fisherman’s sweater. With barely a sigh he surrendered to my intimacy, his body tipped forward and he fell gracefully into my depths. Orbs of oxygen trapped in his hair gave the man a halo of light. His surprised and staring eyes surrounded by lashes fluffy with bubbles slowly lost their enquiring gleam and became opaque, like oysters in their shells or rock pools when disturbed, when the water grows misty with swirling sand. My lure was such, his enchantment so complete, he did not struggle; he simply gave himself up to me. And whilst on the sea and in the air, searches were made for him, by boats and helicopters and prying lights, my victim calmly sank to his fate, and I, innocently lapping the shores, shared my booty with no one.
Late One Sunday Evening.
I took three young men, youths, gawky, shy, yet full of adolescent arrogance.
They were paddling in a lake, one of several of me, up to their knees in cold clear water. Quicksilver fish flicked around their submerged ankles and in their wake, as the three young friends waded in single file towards the horizon. The one in front, in the deepest water suddenly came upon a hidden chasm. He put down his trusting foot and toppled sideways into my depths. I sucked at him hungrily. Unlike the fisherman, he thrashed, unwilling to be seduced, and his fellow waders hurried to help him. Unlucky for them, I was in vengeful mood and with the sweep of a cold current herded these to my waiting arms. They shrieked and struggled to no avail. Rolled up jeans dragged at their long, lean, nearly man legs. For a few minutes my surface was frothy with anxious cascades, then stillness returned. The dragonflies, fluttering like moths in a lampshade, returned to my miniscus and resumed their surface activities. There was great dismay when the three boys were found in the reeds, all tangled limbs and folding bodies, hair swirling amongst the irises and bullrushes.
A Week Later.
In a land where water is more precious than gold, where famine holds intermittent reign and death is a desultory danger, I gather what little there is of me like a mother hen gathering up her chicks. The tribes’ people wait days for clouds to gather and rain to descend, days whilst their water carriers empty, their thirsts grow. The old begin to die, sitting cross legged, heads held like rose bowls in gnarled and shrivelled hands, sorry victims of my caprice. Babies whimper weakly till their eyes glaze and their tiny fists, no longer a comfort, fall from their gaping mouths.
Having squandered time awaiting rain, the remaining few walk to certain death. Papery bodies spread across the sand, ragged clothes flap like canvas in the arid desert wind. Skin cracks and yields to the sweltering sun. Spirits seep into the fissured earth beneath them, finding their way down to me, far underground, a small but significant stream winding my way to another me, an ocean.
In New Orleans I joined Hurricane Katrina.
I surged and hurled my way over harbour lights. I raced hungrily through the city where I gathered shacks and stationary cars, debris, dead things and unwise or unlucky pedestrians in my ever widening girth.
Simultaneously, trillions of gallons of me fell, egged on by the warm tropics.
In the eye wall of the hurricane I swirled in winds which are still gathering speed, ninety, a hundred, a hundred and thirty miles an hour, a merry go round of impending doom.
Hurricane Katrina was a deadly show, I know. There, I’m not human.
In Thailand I planned a tsunami.
At Easter time, we gather together, our family.
My brother fire comes to me and orchestrates a great show of sheet lightening and from many vantages I watch as the sky lights up with neon light.
My sister air drifts in, she deigns to appear, she’s everywhere and in no place. Rarely does she make her presence felt in my presence. I gather her to me, yet my arms cannot hold her, she is spirit, lighter than any of us, to my mercury; to my brother fire’s all encompassing weight.
Earth is our transvestite sibling, grounded yet ever changing, with an agenda unknown to us.
I am water.
Lynda E Green
