WATER
Bringing Water
We walk around
unsure of ourselves,
struggling to keep it together,
wondering how we will keep it together
inside this single body, single mind and single heart.
It can be a mess in here with our
seasonal monsoons, periods of drought,
plagues of broken trust, of loss and grief,
of heartbreak and illness and
unforeseen meteor strikes where known
worlds are ending within our midst.
Oh, how we carry this weather,
these scourges, around.
You would never know.
We can look so perfect and yet be in such distress.
But someone else should know.
I hope you have someone you can trust to know.
Someone to whom you can say,
Hey, look, I have discovered I am human
and full of need.
Will you listen?
Because I don’t know what I need,
only that I am in need.
Perhaps there is no cure,
(in fact, I know there is no cure,
the only cure being death
and we are much too young for that)
but the only remedy is to have a witness,
to let the truth of your innermost being collide with the air,
to meet the eardrums and heart of the person beside you,
someone waiting at the door, feeling honored to be let in.
Because aren’t we all just sitting on the edge of our seats,
exhilarated by the chance to hear and share
the most terrible and wonderful truths
there are to be lived in this lifetime,
wondering how everyone else is faring
under these conditions of having been born.
These truths are as essential as water--
that we need each other,
need to take turns being strong for each other,
that we are a mess of confusion at times,
that there is no cure, only to bear witness, to ask for witness,
and the best we can offer is to walk to the river together,
in both sacred silence and with sacredly spoken trust.
To offer the little medicine we have, to say:
I will sit with you.
I will fetch a glass of water,
and until you can name your needs and tell your truths,
I will keep lifting this possibility, this connection, this water,
up to your dry and thirsty and very human lips.
Laurel Trautwei
