Water is the basis of life, the element that defines 90% of our body and without which we cannot survive. How it moves from snow to rivers to oceans to clouds and back again is an amazing meditation – watch this video!
And when you’re done, read the poem below. I wrote it in 1996 after reading an article on water in a Zen magazine. It was first published in Touchstone Journal, and earned an honorable mention in Current Magazine’s fiction & poetry contest.
ICED WATER WITH A TWIST OF TIME
© 1996, Linda C. Anger
This drink,
iced and purified,
once touched the lips of
Australopithecus Afarensis –
Lucy in her first bipedal steps –
3 million years ago in Ethiopia.
Drawn from lakes, released
from faucets, evaporated, rained,
recorded, invoked –
billions of gallons,
rivers of thought,
around and around
in endless recycle.
This same water was sipped
from Buddha’s cupped hands
along the Ganges, cleansed wounds
on the beaches of Normandy,
fed cornfields in Kansas.
The quiet pond at my center
knows what Lucy knew;
the fluid touch and
illusion of time,
life’s undertow and current.
Like water, I roll down crooked paths,
drop to the depths of myself
and swallow,
a ripple in liquid history.