This phrase is the title of an essay in All We Can Save. It lives in the Nourish section of the book, nestled between “Black Gold” and “The Seed Underground.”
“God is change,” claims Octavia Butler.
“Water is in constant flux,” says Judith D. Schwartz.
It’s not like we didn’t know things were changing. The land knew. The animals knew. The insects knew.
The water knew.
We just didn’t want to participate in the dialogue. We didn’t want to be water. We didn’t want to water.
We didn’t want to listen.
Instead we spoke, we yelled, we screamed. We stamped our feet.
We set the town on fire and when we couldn’t put it out
we left.
We put up a sign and left the smoke to rise from the cracks in the asphalt.
We dreamed of enterprising our way into the universe.
Yet we couldn’t imagine working together to clean up the rivers.
What if
What if we took the seeds, and planted them?
what if they grew?
What if the tree bloomed again?
What if we watered it?
water is also a verb