Water for billions of
years has shaped the Earth --
pouring
down slopes, sculpturing channels, battering headlands,
filling
the deeps with seas, lakes and sediments that have themselves
formed land.
Without water, the earth
would be sharp and naked as the moon.
In water, life began; in water it evolved, until life on land
is
integral, essential, to the water cycle.
Now water, rising under
the sun as vapor, forming clouds, drifting as mist,
cooled
by night into dew and frost, falling as rain, sleet, snow,
drips into forests
and grasses and is breathed back by them into the air,
sinks down through
soil held firm by roots to fill the dark lakes underground,
or,
sparkling forth as springs, to flow in streams and rivers back
into the sea.
NANCY
NEWHALL
