Water

By SHELIA BLAND

There is something about the water that frightens me.
Is this a before or after Katrina reaction?
1600 dead.
There’s just so much of it.
Rivers, lakes, gulfs, streams,
Ponds, bayous, lagoons, puddles, oceans,
Just so much of it.
1800 dead.
Rain, storms.
Typhoons, sweat, tears.
Just so much of it.
Blood streams, humidity everything that oozes,
Water.
I’m a little afraid of it.
It sort of takes the solid out of solid.
It permeates everything.
Animates.
Changes the certain into a soluble mush.
A fog.
Water.
It’s everywhere.
We drink it, eat it, breathe it. Sweat it,
urinate it, defecate it.
Inescapable.
More present in our beings than flesh, sinew, bone.
But is this a before or after Katrina thing?
Houses exploded, crashed into each other. Floated like boats.
High rises sit with vacant stares, like petrified tree stumps.
Trauma rains down into a sea of nightmares.
People hesitantly return to washed away spaces—
locations that sheltered generations of relatives.
Ancestral grounds.
Ancestral waters.
Water breaks us into life.
Boats, ships, barges –
float on rivers in pretense of a separation between water and land,
water and people.
Water and anything.
Acting out a farce.
Water is boat, is ship, is barge, is people
headed towards cities which pretend not to be rocks and trees and sand
and water –
dressed up as buildings, bridges, cars, sidewalks, stops signs – a farce –
the boats, ships, barges, bridges,
farces traveling between farces,
on farces.… Read the rest “Water”