I am the water

I am the water
Without me you die
I rush along through a world unknown
I laugh, I sing, I dance along
Belonging to all,
But always alone.
I quench your thirst
Give gifts of rainfall
And majestically journey
Past the great and the small.

Why then do you hurt me
The substance you need?
Giving poisonous gifts
To support all your greed.
Hiding sewery secrets
Below shores of my seas,
Spilling venomous rainbows
On reflections of trees.

Is it selfishness that helped spawn this seed
In the minds I help most,
In humanity?
This plant does not thrive on all of your need
It survives to hurt and kill purity.
The thing you call money,
I call it a weed
It suffocates animals that live around me
It wraps us in darkness
Until we can’t breathe
And hides all the treasures of nature’s beauty.

I am the water
Without me you die
I rush along through a world unknown
Sometimes I laugh at the joys that I pass
Sometimes I see all the damage and cry
But remember, while it is pain that you cast,
I am the water
Without me you die.

I wrote this poem for an environmental awareness exhibition when I was 12 years old. I found it again this year and was surprised by the depth and relevance of it.

The photo is one I took last year of the Bellinger River on the mid-north coast of NSW. It’s the river I wrote this poem about.