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.

Uncertainty

Return from afar to find an old place
Stand on familiar ground
Trying to find some saving grace,
Within or without the truth has no sound
But surety and comforting relief.

All that has gone is all that will come
In a different form to be to you translated.
Rising up from the earth,
Chasing after the sun,
Bending in the wind as resolve is created.
Peace within hope and hope within dreams
Sense does not work
When worlds collide and the future lies
Amidst chaos and conflict.
Return to the ties of the past
Find new, enlightened edict.

Shared thoughts are twice blessed
By a double-mind’s care
New views on concerns
Bring perspectives refreshed.
For as we are taught to share
That sharing can good prospects bring
And brush away the burrs and spurns
Which plague all our uncertainty.
True friendship stands through all the storms
And lives to see the changes
That come when decisions bring about new dawns.

Assurance will stray
From the foundations you make
Yet the sun will rise every day
And set without mistake
Think on this, therein lies such comfort as relief.