who says water has no taste, no color, no smell?

water’s got sound, and howls like a stray dog, or airplane take-offs, lives louder than block parties, louder than gunfire and birth moans, water’s got music, in the way it hits your skin, bites your lip, rolls fingers through your hair. we’re all made out of water.

this something that i knew, but trying to know, trying to measure. fifty water drops might be enough to quench my thirst. four hundred maybe to wash my hair. two thousand possibly to do the dishes.

a man in sapa told me a story about a water, of the long drought and famine right after the america-vietnam war, how his family had nothing to eat or drink, and farms dried up, land crumpled and people waited over water pipes, set up buckets and tarps outside for the one day that may rain, and one day a long time away, they heard a murmur in the sky, and water fell swiftly, falling on them.

i felt my face dry as i listened – wrinkled eye brows, parched mouth – and he shrugged it off and casually smiled, “i had no food, that’s why i’m so much smaller than you!”

just appreciation. for my fridge, for my shower, for my dishes. for oceans, streams, rivers, rain, drizzles, ripples, waterfalls, showers, moisture, humidity, lakes, puddles, leaks, downpours, drainage, currents, torrents, surges, and the bay.

(no answers here. but maybe over at worldchanging, a website fighting for a bright green future.)