This is a story of water.
Where water starts and where it stops.
How I have started a journey today,
but was already on it
before I stepped forth.
Like the water that never wasn’t.
How before it was river or lake,
it was rain, snow,
precipitation falling
in the great water cycle.
Tonight I read of Lake Taupo
being so large and deep
a water drop travels 11 years to reach
the other side,
to disperse in the Waikato River.
How this is a story of us.
How we might be snow
falling on Mt Tongariro,
to then melt and find its tributaries
to Lake Taupō–nui–a–Tia,
this great cloak of Tia.
To then again be churned and mixed
in rapids and waterfalls.
How it isn’t always clear of what
we are a part—
lake, river, or raincloud.
But what is clear is who we are,
and what we are made of,
this H2O we all melt down to.
How just like water
we are part sky, and earth,
and mountain,
part everywhere we’ve been
and all we survey.
How I start on this journey today
to realise, eternal witness,
what is older than me,
but of which I am made up too.
Thus I haven’t started the journey,
have just picked up with new awareness
my place in it.
No wonder I look at you, water,
and feel as old as you.
Some kinship turning in me somersaults,
like water circling.
Ana Lisa de Jong
Living Tree Poetry
April 2022
Living Tree Poetry 