H₂O

I have always invited life to flourish,
so alluring that animals heave their weight for miles
and anxious antelopes dare to taste
even while crocodiles shelter
behind my insidious sheen.

I penetrate the corners of bodies
with moist workings through frantic cells.
In winter, I bloom from cracked lips,
and on those days when noses glow like embers,
I might glide in fine flakes.

As steam, I screen the butchery of kitchens,
and when a human needs to be clean,
my drops traverse
soft terrains
of pretty skin.

I billow and spread high above their heads,
plummet en masse to send them scurrying under roofs,
or gather in lakes, where they tend to play;
and if they’re careless,
I might – through no fault of my own –
spirit their little lives away.

I’ve done it before, to many,
by riverbank or shore,
sometimes out in the frigid sea,
standing as a tower of ice
ready to wound the flank of a ship.

Where my flow is delicious and clear,
they’ve built towns around me.

And when they gather to sit on sand,
I can entrance the philosophical.