Rose Lennard
LA IS BURNING, COUNTRIES ARE AT WAR, AND I AM SO DAMN GRATEFUL FOR MY SHOWER
And god said, Let there be showers! —
and water fell on the bowed heads and shoulders
of people throughout the land, and sluiced
over breasts and bellies and buttocks,
coursed down limbs and fingers and toes;
and the water ran hallowed and hot on cold days,
and blessedly cool in Summer’s heat, it rinsed sleep
from just-awoken eyes, washed mud and sweat
off tingling skin, it mingled with piss
and tears and bodily fluids, gulped shit,
unwelcome hair, the tiny invisible eggs
of parasites. The people dripped and shone.
They took showers when they ached,
to wake up or wind down, or when
they were lonely and longed to be touched.
They fucked and screamed in long steamy showers,
and babies were conceived as windows fogged
and walls streamed and blossomed with mould.
And the water ran and ran and ran,
it obeyed the rules of water: to find
its own level, to dissolve, carry, deposit.
It took our chemicals and waste, and lo,
it whisked them to a place the people
called away. And maybe god also said, let there be
sewage farms, and factories to turn out boilers
and pipes and flanged rubber seals,
and nodding donkeys sucking oil out
of desert sands, and let there be plumbers
and designers and people packing marble tesserae
into crates, and yes, let there be politicians
telling us we have a god-given right
to use as much of this goddamn planet
as our squeaky-clean fingers can grip;
and did god say, let there be firefighters with freshly-
bathed children sleeping in beds, let them hose
god-given water over the smouldering roofs
of mansions nestled in droughted hills,
let them risk their lives putting out blazes
round the blue-tiled pools of celebrities?
Let the water run off asphalt and concrete,
let it run to the ocean to try to forget
all it has seen and all it has swallowed,
let it return to the fish and the turtles
and the immense forgiveness of whales, let it cry—
My god, why have you forsaken me?
—from Poets Respond
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Rose Lennard : “Sometimes I marvel at the luxury that is a shower, a glory that is often taken for granted. I’m not religious, but nevertheless steeped in the language of Christianity when it comes to gratitude and wonder. But if we believe that god made the good things, what can we say about the bad? Robin Wall Kimmerer (in Braiding Sweetgrass) tells of the Thanksgiving Address of the Haudenosaunee people, which says ‘We are grateful that the waters are still here and doing their duty of sustaining life on Mother Earth’. Water has been given such heavy duties, and modern life means we cannot help but abuse water every day with our wastage and pollution.”
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