Tuesday Poem - Water by Melissa Green

                  

                 v Water

                  Father, I'm drowsy in April's humming sun and think

                  A girl the color of Autumn kneels at the Squanicook's bank,

                  Who is the river's daughter, dressed in driven skins,

                  Who knows a cedar wind at Nissequassick brings

                  The schools of alewife, herring, yellow perch ashore.

                  The place of Salmon roars with light. She steps, sure-

                  Footed onto stone; lithe as a poplar, bends over

                  The water. Wren feathers, shells, seven quills quiver

                  In her sable hair. Her eyes, a spring-fed stream, 

                  Like silica, seek bottom. Deep in her mossy brain,

                  The white-tailed mouse is born. She carries in her supple

                  Body all of spring - a tree frog in the apple,

                  A kit fox dozing in the brush, a brash otter

                  Diving her river-veins - the new, young, utterly

                  Green morning beads her skin. How simply she leans

                  Into understanding, baptized by light and the delicate lines

                  Of shadow from cedar. A goldfinch has flown its ribbed nest,

                  Dusting her cheek with its wing, a hummingbird throbs in her wrist, 

                  She is drenched in waking. Wonder, a long-legged doe,

                  Drinks in deeply, as all instinctive creatures do, 

                  And laughs, leaping the current, printing the field with dew. 

                  Melissa Green 

                     from The Squanicook Eclogues - pg 15. (W.W Norton & Company, Inc., 1987)

Melissa Green - whose 'vision is wonderbursts of wordstruts, inveterately inner, complex and subtle'* - is well-known within our community and beyond. The first time I read The Squanicook Eclogues, I cried. Noisily. Full-heartedly. Aghast at her exquisite, authoritative, passionate command of language, I audaciously imagined I might one day create a suite of paintings in response to these four poems. I made a start with an image-homage to 'v Fire'. 

Amy Clampitt endorsed Melissa's first collection with these words, "Melissa Green is a born, a natural poet, with whose work I've felt a quick affinity, along with an astonished admiration. Who could have supposed that Wilfred Owen would find such a disciple? It is an index of her originality that beginning with his strict and demanding consonances, she has gone her own gravely, sonorously engrossing way, and done so with such winning assurance." Melissa is one of our Tuesday Poets; the poem she posted on her blog today - Statue of a Couple by Czesław Miłosz seems to me an echo of her Water. . . 

*Richard Eberhart

For more Tuesday Poems, please click on the quill. 

This week's editor is Seattle poet, Therese Clear. She has chosen the poem Talking Mean by Paul Hunter

Water, Upon Which All Depends

Whilst researching material for two different-but-connected online projects I'm currently immersed in, I visited - not for the first time - the site of a remarkable online manuscript titled The Ascent of Humanity by Charles Eisenstein.  

Here are a few excerpts from Chapter VII: The Age of Reunion: The Age of Water 

"The unsustainability of our present system derives at bottom from its linearity, its assumption of an infinite reservoir of inputs and limitless capacity for waste. A fitting metaphor for such a system is fire, which involves a one-way conversion of matter from one form to another, liberating energy—heat and light—in the process. Just as our economy is burning through all forms of stored cultural and natural wealth to liberate energy in the form of money, so also does our industry burn up stored fossil fuels to liberate the energy that powers our technology. Both generate heat for a while, but also increasing amounts of cold, dead, toxic ash, gunk, and pollution, whether the ash-heap of wasted human lives or the strip-mine pits and toxic waste dumps of industry."

". . . Underlying the future technological economy will be principles of interdependence, cyclicity, abundance, and the gift mentality. Can you think of a better simile for all four of these principles, than that they are like water? Water, upon which all depends. Water, which moves in cycles. Water, abundant to ubiquity. Water, bringing the gift of life.

Our dependence on water—the fact that we are made mostly of water—denies the primary conceit of civilization, that we are separate from nature or even nature's master. No more nature's master are we, than we are the master of water!

Yet for centuries we have tried to persuade ourselves otherwise. In science our pretense of mastery manifests most fundamentally in the supposition that water is a structureless jumble of identical molecules, a generic medium, any two drops the same. To a standard substance we can apply universal equations. That each part of the universe is unique is profoundly troubling to any science based on the general application of standard techniques. The same is true of technology. Only a universe constructed of generic building blocks is amenable to control. Just as the architectural engineer assumes that two steel beams of identical composition will have identical properties, so does the chemist believe the same of two samples of pure H2O.

That any two samples of H2O, or graphite, or ethanol, or any other pure chemical are identical is a dogma with enormous ramifications. It implies that the complexity and uniqueness of objects of our senses is an illusion, that they are mere permutations of the same standard building blocks. Such a view naturally corresponds to the objectification of the world, which makes of it a collection of things, masses.

The opposite view sees every piece of the universe as unique. No two drops of water, no two rocks, no two electrons are identical, but each has a unique individuality. This is essentially the view of animism, which assigned to each animate and inanimate object a spirit. To a Stone Age person, the idea that water from any source had a unique character or spirit would have seemed obvious. Modern chemistry denies it and says any apparent differences are merely due to impurities—the underlying water is the same. Animism says no—to have a spirit is to be unique, irreducibly and intrinsically unique. To have a spirit is to be special. . . "

Eisenstein continues. . . 

". . . A primitive hunter-gatherer would not find it difficult to believe that all water had a unique personality, that river water, lake water, rain water, spring water, and water taken from the ground would have differing effects on the body and emotions, and perhaps distinct ceremonial uses as well. I imagine some languages don't even use the same word for these different types of water. Similarly, a hunter-gatherer would find it easy to believe that beloved water would have different properties from despised water. That we believe all water to be a uniform, lifeless "substance" that can be made identical by removing its impurities is a reflection of our ideology of objectivity and mechanism. We once knew better, before we made of the world a thing, before we reduced the infinity of reality to a finitude of generic labels (like "water"). A future technology of water will recover this knowledge, and we will no longer treat water as anything less than sacred. . ."

Continue reading from - and about - this book here. 


In his introduction, Charles Eisenstein writes, "I have put the entire text on line because I believe it is important for these ideas to circulate as widely as possible in the present time of crisis. In the book, I write of a coming shift from a profit-taking economy to a gift economy, from an economy of "how can I take the most?" to "how can I best give of my gifts?" This future, in which the anxiety of "making a living" no longer drives us, will arise out of the transformation in the human sense of self that is gathering today. But it is NOT ONLY A FUTURE. We can live it now too. It is in this spirit that I offer you The Ascent of Humanity on line. (You can also purchase the book from Amazon.)

Replenished - pastel on paper - CB

May we each day wake undaunted by the endless possibilities of colour. . . 

Water messenger, Dr. Masaru Emoto

Dr. Emoto's Request for Assisting Japan:

Below is a special message from renowned Japanese Scientist Dr. Masaru Emoto who brought attention to the power of thought/prayer on water crystals. He has a special request for assistance tomorrow noon...

"To All People Around the World,

Please send your prayers of love and gratitude to water at the nuclear plants in Fukushima, Japan.

By the massive earthquakes of Magnitude 9 and surreal massive tsunamis, more than 10,000 people are still missing…even now… It has been 16 days already since the disaster happened. What makes it worse is that water at the reactors of Fukushima Nuclear Plants started to leak, and it’s contaminating the ocean, air and water molecules of the surrounding areas. 

Human wisdom has not been able to do much to solve the problem, but we are only trying to cool down the anger of radioactive materials in the reactors by discharging water to them.

Is there really nothing else to do?

I think there is. During over twenty year research of hado measuring and water crystal photographic technology, I have been witnessing that water can turn positive when it receives pure vibration of human prayer no matter how far away it is.

The energy formula of Albert Einstein, E=MC2 really means that Energy = number of people and the square of people’s consciousness. 

Now is the time to understand the true meaning. Let us all join the prayer ceremony as fellow citizens of the planet earth.  I would like to ask all people, not just in Japan, but all around the world to please help us to find a way out the crisis of this planet. 

The prayer procedure is as follows...

Name of ceremony:

“Let’s send our thoughts of love and gratitude to all water in the nuclear plants in Fukushima”

Day and Time:

March 31st, 2011 (Thursday)

12:00 noon in each time zone

Please say the following phrase:

“The water of Fukushima Nuclear Plant, we are sorry to make you suffer.  Please forgive us.  We thank you, and we love you.”  Please say it aloud or in your mind. 

Repeat it three times as you put your hands together in 

a prayer position. Please offer your sincere prayer.

Thank you very much from my heart."


Masaru Emoto
Messenger of Water

                                                                  Take a small boat 

                                                                  down the river, fish 

                                                                  in the rain, cherish

                                                                  the green moss, love 

                                                                  the waters that offer us 

                                                                  their purity; love
                                                                  the waters. 


                                                                  CB