Oh gift of rain
Cup of life

The evening settles on the Sechelt Government Wharf

From the sky to our lips
Trees drink deep
Searching routes roots shoot to savour

Damp drips in the mossy mushroom festooned 
draping of forest old and full

Oh gift of rain
cup of life
fall from above
bestow life

On roofs and roads
Leaves and legs
Washing, wending, descending
by gravity’s constant call

To return to return again
Evapostranspiration calls you up
Precipitation so very precipitous
can bring you down..
Run off now to the sea
Rejoin your vast family
Wherein therein dwell we and she
and he and me.

Conveniently covalently bonded
attract repel chargedly 
Universal solvent
Essential
Vital
Necessary
I need you.

Where did you come from?
The sea? Look further
The sky? further still…
Water born of stars’ birth
born as outward wind
collides and compresses
heats and emerges transformed.

Dusk falls at Porteau Cove, British Columbia

Such is the reality of water
to nurture and destroy
to bear life and bring death
anew and again and again and again

The means of life
and the greatest active destroyer of it

The nurturing trickle
and the ravenous torrent.

The delicate symmetry of snowflakes
alighting so softly on skin
and the hailstones that hurtle
down to dent cars and skulls.

A bird floats in the Salish Sea’s Trail Bay, near Sechelt, British Columbia

All life needs water
Where there is life there is water
Where there was life there was water.

People fear and respect fire
which is extinguished by water
The fire quenched while the water evaporates
to condense and fall again.

Neptune, Poseidon, Naiads and Nymphs
Baptism, Purification, Oasis, Paradise.
Water honored and revered
by those that came before.
Those that understood.

Be careful, you who disparage.
Take heed, those who disdain
the rain is life and death.

It is tinkling and crashing on tin
musically falling in still ponds to ripple
Thunderingly carving through rock of ages

Cocky we who hold the hose and claim dominance

crossing water

Growth and destruction
Respect the rain
Welcome the waves

Be thankful and do not fear
For as much as it is us
more so are we not it?

We follow in the example of water
We nurture and destroy
we foster and create

What we do to the water
We do to ourselves.