Living Water

Little bottle at my elbow,

can it be that you have shared

in the world-encircling surf and surge,

that you threw yourself on the shore

to break cliffs and drown cities

that you danced with the moon your lover

and beat with the steady breathing of the earth,

that you were home to shark and sponge

and Beryl in a bikini?

O can it be that the sun your father

warmed you and called you higher,

that your brother the wind chased you

rapturously round the skies

to make diamonds together, swifter

than Superman and more gaudy?

Did you invent a billion new shapes

as you drifted over the mountains

and hardened into the monsters that grind them away?

Or did you fall as swift rain

that quickens the earth and spurns it

as you spurted through its valleys 

to surge in the seas again?

How can it be that we caught you

and moulded you to our plastic will?

That you wait, servant-like,

in the shape we assigned you

until the time comes to pour forth again?

If it be that I may taste of so holy a thing,

then may the tide of the universe in you 

flow through this body 

and live in every cell.