Water Gratitude, for “Water Studies”

Performed with Ari Mokdad and Elizabeth Schulman (choreographers) at Detroit Dance City Festival, August 2019.

Water Gratitude

Listen beyond your ears. Listen inside the bowl,
from the cradle of the Niagara Escarpment.
Listen. The voices of five lakes, five senses. Beings.
Listen to the thrum of our Deep Time,

to the words inside the wet journey,
to the knowing inside our waves.
Listen to the molecular change—
What if now is not the end of the world?

Instead, a great transforming
where our waters graft to trees of life, turn
ugly power into the pure focus
of our waves to shore—to

that one wave, that from-the-deep surfacing—
joyous cerulean wave. What if in your broken hearts,
and in water’s one thousand million broken parts,
light came rising in spray, piercing diamonds

of thanksgiving, soaking you, giving and
forgiving, beyond false promises to liquid tendons,
to the flip, arc, pull of current,
riptide, shallows, pond, spring, a deluge

of waves streaming, anointing, complete.
Listen. The song of you drowning
happily! Alive inside the blue breath
and muscle of water.