A Glass of Water

Go get your loveliest, most worthy, most inviting cup. Fill it up with a sparkling utterly beautiful clean pure swirl of cool water, appreciate the miracle you just managed to perform, be thankful for the grace of it, and take a sweet sip. 

Then consider a toast to this fine gentleman, Feliciano dos Santos. He sings about water, but his speaking voice is music too. If you make it to the end of the video, you can sing along: 2008 Goldman Prize Ceremony - Feliciano dos Santos

My father grew up on a homestead in the wilds of the Montana prairie. Wind and ice, heat and sun. Hail. Stars and the directions, naked there, clear and perfect company.  Rims of the earth to hold your loneliness. Dry grass and dust storms make the winds take form, you can see that wild shape-changer on the prairie, careening through the place. The wind would take a leaf, but none for the taking here, just dust. A tiny rut in the earth stretching out to the North, to their homestead, like a thin arm of bones reaching to the past. There is a tree, a cottonwood, in the distance.  Shade your eyes with your hand, look to it.  My aunt and uncle, when kids, would ride out to the cottonwood, gallop, just for the guilty sweet pleasure of shade.  The roots run deep, down to the buried waters, touch the source and drink in the cool darkness, bringing back life to the surface, into the leaves that shine and shiver in the sun and sing the wind songs. 

My father used to carry a bucket of water into the house every morning to start the day.  60 years later, living in Los Angeles, he still did not take water lightly, but with a measured gratitude. A hot shower, warmth on tired shoulders.  Clean hands. Nothing spilled. Thankful for the nature of it, the perfect generosity of it, the ease of our times. Drops lovely as diamonds. Unwhispered thanks.  Don’t waste it, child.

When we visited the homestead, there was still a ranch near the place. A windmill built by my grandfather’s hand pulled at the aquifer, drew a thin sip, shared it with a small green garden.  An old homestead, once a neighbor’s winter shelter, now had become a tool shed.  The local duck had its own bucket, and sat in it, imagining a lake never seen. 

I’m told my grandmother often sang to her work. I could almost hear her on the wind.