As Tucson enters monsoon season, here is a replenishing wellspring for Dear Body of Water.
We hope that you will add your voice to the growing chorus of water.
WELLSPRING (for a chorus of water)
The human body is mostly water.
The planet is mostly water.
We are all bodies of water.
~ Dear Body of Water
Dear acequia
Dear ancestor
Dear animal
Dear aquarium
Dear aqueduct
Dear aquifer
Dear archipelago
Dear arm
Dear arroyo
Dear atmosphere
Dear aunt
Dear backwater
Dear basin
Dear bathtub
Dear bay
Dear bayou
Dear beach
Dear beloved
Dear berm
Dear bight
Dear billabong
Dear bioswale
Dear bird
Dear birdbath
Dear birth canal
Dear blackwater
Dear bodily fluid
Dear body of water
Dear bog
Dear boiler
Dear brain
Dear branch
Dear brook
Dear brother
Dear bubble
Dear Buddha board
Dear burn
Dear canal
Dear canteen
Dear channel
Dear child
Dear cistern
Dear coast
Dear coastal plain
Dear condensation
Dear conduit
Dear confluence
Dear Continental Divide
Dear cooking pot
Dear correction line
Dear cousin
Dear cove
Dear creek
Dear culvert
Dear current
Dear dam
Dear Day Zero
Dear dead pool
Dear dehumidifier
Dear delta
Dear desalinization plant
Dear descendant
Dear desert
Dear designated flood zone
Dear dew
Dear disappearing island
Dear distributary channel
Dear ditch
Dear diversion
Dear dog bowl
Dear downspout
Dear downstream
Dear drain
Dear draw
Dear drinking fountain
Dear drip
Dear drip system
Dear drizzle
Dear droplet
Dear drought
Dear eddy
Dear effluent
Dear erosion
Dear estuary
Dear evaporation
Dear fall line
Dear father
Dear faucet
Dear fill-in-blank
Dear fish
Dear fish ladder
Dear fishbowl
Dear fjord
Dear flood
Dear floodplain
Dear flow
Dear flower
Dear fog
Dear font
Dear fork
Dear fountain
Dear French drain
Dear friend
Dear geyser
Dear glacier
Dear glass of water
Dear glen
Dear grandfather
Dear grandmother
Dear greywater
Dear groundwater
Dear gulch
Dear gulf
Dear gully
Dear gutter
Dear hail
Dear harbor
Dear harmonium
Dear hatchery
Dear headwaters
Dear heart
Dear holding tank
Dear hose
Dear hot spring
Dear hot tub
Dear hot water bottle
Dear hot water heater
Dear human
Dear humidifier
Dear Hundredth Meridian
Dear hurricane
Dear HVAC system
Dear hydraulis
Dear hydrophone
Dear hydropower
Dear ice
Dear ice cube
Dear ice rink
Dear ice sheet
Dear icehouse
Dear icicle
Dear impaired water
Dear impoundment
Dear inlet
Dear irrigation
Dear island
Dear jug
Dear koi pond
Dear lack of water
Dear lake
Dear leak
Dear levada
Dear levee
Dear lick
Dear lifeblood
Dear lifeline
Dear lineage
Dear loch
Dear lock
Dear kettle lake
Dear kill
Dear mangrove swamp
Dear marine sanctuary
Dear marsh
Dear meander
Dear meander line
Dear melting
Dear mere
Dear mirage
Dear mist
Dear moat
Dear moisture
Dear monsoon
Dear mother
Dear mucous
Dear neck
Dear oasis
Dear ocean
Dear offspring
Dear olla
Dear osmosis
Dear outer banks
Dear outhouse
Dear oxbow
Dear passage
Dear pipeline
Dear pitcher
Dear plant
Dear planter
Dear playa
Dear plunge pool
Dear pond
Dear pool
Dear potable aqua iodine tablet
Dear puddle
Dear precipitation
Dear qanat
Dear radiator
Dear rain
Dear rain chain
Dear rain curtain
Dear raincoat
Dear rainfall
Dear rapids
Dear reach
Dear reef
Dear relative
Dear resaca
Dear reservoir
Dear restroom
Dear rights for water
Dear rights of water
Dear rill
Dear ripple
Dear river
Dear riverbank
Dear rivulet
Dear run
Dear runoff
Dear sandbar
Dear scupper
Dear sea
Dear seaway
Dear seep
Dear septic system
Dear sewage
Dear shore
Dear shower
Dear sink
Dear sister
Dear slip-n-slide
Dear slough
Dear snow
Dear sound
Dear source
Dear spillway
Dear splash
Dear spouse
Dear spray nozzle
Dear spring
Dear sprinkler
Dear squirt gun
Dear stalactite
Dear stalagmite
Dear steam
Dear storm
Dear stranger
Dear stream
Dear submarine ridge
Dear swale
Dear swamp
Dear sweat
Dear swimming hole
Dear swimming pool
Dear teapot
Dear tear
Dear tide
Dear tidepool
Dear toilet
Dear tributary
Dear trickle
Dear trough
Dear umbrella
Dear uncle
Dear undersea trench
Dear underwater
Dear upstream
Dear vase
Dear vein
Dear vernal pond
Dear wash
Dear washing machine
Dear wastewater
Dear water bottle
Dear water crisis
Dear water cycle
Dear water feature
Dear water filter
Dear water flute
Dear water garden
Dear water harvest
Dear water pollutant
Dear Water Protector
Dear water purifier
Dear water rights
Dear water spirit
Dear water treatment plant
Dear water vapor
Dear water vessel
Dear waterborne disease
Dear watercolor
Dear waterfall
Dear watering can
Dear waterlog
Dear watermark
Dear watershed
Dear waterslide
Dear waterwall
Dear waterway
Dear wave
Dear WC
Dear we
Dear well
Dear wellspring
Dear wetland
Dear whirlpool
Dear womb
Dear xeric garden
Dear you
Dear zoo
~ ~ ~ ~
Dear Body of Water invites digital and mailed postcard-sized love letters to recognize beloved rivers, oceans, aquifers, creeks, ponds, and other bodies of water to join a collective poem as global chorus. Water is treated as an economic resource yet is animate and animating, interrelating human and more-than-human lives. The human body is mostly water. The planet is mostly water. We are all bodies of water. How does water melt into our histories, memories, dreams, griefs, hopes & presence? What bodies of water are overlooked or neglected? More than water rights, can we consider rights of and for water? The act of collectively addressing bodies of water as living beings (as in, Dear Body of Water) is not new but renewing knowledges with hopes to reframe water in the climate crisis (beyond floods or droughts, rising sea levels or retreating rivers) less by fear than by care: tending to communal interrelations. Wherever we are, the chance to share and hear personally about bodies of water might grow a chorus of care to replenish our attentions and practices around local watersheds that interrelate us with each other and our planet’s lifeblood.
Take a moment to reorient yourself to a body of water about whom you care and address Dear Body of Water. Will you add your voice to the chorus of water?
Visit a growing map here.
__________________
Gretchen Ernster Henderson grew up by the Pacific Ocean and has lived coast to coast, between rivers and bays and arroyos, learning from and with many bodies of water. With the University of Arizona Poetry Center and Wick Poetry Center at Kent State University, she launched Dear Body of Water as a global call across vulnerable bodies of water to collectively renew ways of knowing water to replenish care of watersheds. Her recent publications include Life in the Tar Seeps: A Spiraling Ecology from a Dying Sea (Trinity University Press 2023) with intermedia tributaries seeping across Ecotone, Orion, LA+/Landscape Architecture Plus, Storied Deserts: Reimagining Global Arid Lands, TSLL, exhibitions and performances, field practices and eco-workshops (including a series at the Poetry Center on “Relational Ecologies: Writing with a More-than-Human World”). In 2024, Gretchen is a Lucas Artist Program Fellow at Montalvo Arts Center and Artist-in-Residence at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater.