And then the last piece I chose for the land, of course,
has to do-- continuing to do with water.
And this is an unpublished piece at this time.
And I called it "Blessings for Water."
And I end the piece-- and I just want
to comment on the last line, because for some people,
it does need a context.
There's a woman who's also, actually,
a MacArthur Fellow, Jesse Little Doe Baird, from Massachusetts.
And she almost single-handedly brought their language
back to life after it hadn't been spoken for over 100 years.
And she used an early-- very early, I think from the 1600s--
a translation of a Bible, the Saint James Bible.
And I remember visiting her at her home
when she was working on this language
revitalization project.
And this Bible-- she had a copy of it, and it's very thick.
And it was on her kitchen table open,
and probably nearly every page or every other page
was flagged with a little colored piece of paper.
And when I just glanced at it, it sort of
looked like a butterfly.
And when I was asked to write a letter about her
for the MacArthur Foundation, I described
you know her work, that the book itself looked like a butterfly,
but the work itself was a butterfly.
So the last line is in reference to this woman.
"Blessings for Water."
"I've touched the waters of the White River in Eastern Arizona,
and I've put my foot in the slow currents of the San Pedro.
I've felt the icy flow of the Merced River in Yosemite.
I've ridden the wave of the Colorado
and rested on its flows.
I've seen the Rio Grande run rapids in the North and meander
through the flats of southern New Mexico,
where whooping cranes rest on their way home.
I've lived in a place called Red River, where there is no river,
but named for a movie instead.
I've lived near the Rillito River, a river named twice,
a river that can flow with the best during rainy winters
and rich summer monsoons, a dry riverbed most of the year,
harboring the dreams and debris of homelessness.
For the larger bodies of water, we must pray at their feet
and give gifts.
I have done so, and record them here.
I have offered blessings at the Pacific Ocean
in San Diego, Los Angeles, La Jolla, Venice,
and Ventura Beach, with vacationers and Frisbee-chasing
dogs as witnesses.
I've offered prayer at a dry, hot desert
beach at the Gulf of Mexico, with only Mexican fishermen
caring for nets as alibis.
I have humbled myself on the black beaches of Hilo, Hawaii,
and another time at Waikiki, oblivious
to bronzed bodies and surfers.
I've offered blessings only once at the Atlantic Ocean,
at Martha's Vineyard, with the woman who
shook her language from sleep."
So that's the water.