A poetic and powerful reflection told from the voice of water itself, this piece invites readers to reconsider their relationship with Earth life's essential element - clean water. Blending environmental awareness with lyrical storytelling, it highlights both the damage being done and the hope still flowing through collective action.

I am Water – ancient as starlight, young as your tears.

You have known me in many moods.
I have danced on your windows and whispered beneath your bridges – rooted forever in the seeds of your life.

I have carved your valleys, painted your clouds, and carried your dreams from kettle to ocean and back again.

But lately, I have been coughing.

Your plastic straws and careless spills make me choke.
My breath – once clean mist, now carries the sighs of engines, oils, and the dusty dregs of forgotten care.

Still, I flow. I cannot help myself.
Flowing is my way of thinking.

I pour through time as rain, as river – as vein and giver, remembering when you revered me. When your ancestors waited for my first spring trickle, blessing my crispness in the apple-bite of harvest time.

Were you ever told that, as cloud, I can weigh as much as one hundred elephants – just before, as rain, I fall?

I know this well.
I carry that weight in every hovering, waiting – keeping my promise to cycle.

I watch your cities grow. I follow your concrete lines as they rush your chemical cocktails away – away from your eye, your ear, your nose and your throat,  out to sea.
Drinking water now taken not from a well, but from a well-earning shelf.

Yet I remain close.

I am in your blood.
In your bread.
In your head.
At the very pen-point where you ink your thinking and align your own story – rarely mine.

Some of you are learning again how to listen.

You are replanting roots that drink wisely.
You are building filters, testing aquaponic systems, catching run-off.
You are finding ways to let me heal – even as others still pierce my aquifers or force me to fall too soon from the sky.

I do not need saving.

But you do.

Because when I am unfit, so are you.

For nearly half a century, World of Water has walked beside me – studying, sharing, teaching. From tidal pools to classrooms, they invite curious minds to dive deeper: to explore how care and understanding keep me fit for purpose – from the fizziest drink to the deepest, sea-bubbling habitat.

So come closer.

Wash your hands in promise.
Treat me with wonder, not waste.

For where I stay clean, you breathe freely.
Where I stay alive, hope still flows.

Help the future survive the present.

Share your journey with World of Water.

[Above: First performed by WOW volunteers as part of “Give Them The Drum”, Writers & Readers Festival, Birmingham Nature Centre, UK.]

Dŵr sy’n cofio popeth — ein dewis ni yw a ydym yn gwrando.

First published online  9 December 2025. Tags update: 08/06/2026