“Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way around or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves.”
— Bruce Lee
The Miracle of Water
I am a molecule.
Two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom, swirling in a sea of electrons.
Now I exist as a solid, frozen in ice, thrust deep and cold in a small glacial crevasse in the mountains.
For decades I remain in suspended animation, in temperatures too cold to unloose my bonds.
A long summer reaches its arms deep into my granite prison, and caresses the vein of ice.
I feel my bonds slipping, sliding, as other molecules melt and separate from long embrace.
I am free!
Beholden to gravity again, my matter falls away to join a trickle of emancipated droplets.
Together we pick up mass and speed, finding the courses and cracks that lead ever downward.
The memory of light explodes as we rise to the surface of a spring.
Molecules jostling, gliding, sloughing off one another.
Minute foreign particles, minerals, and debris mix, churn, and settle.
Up and over, gravity pulling down again, skidding off rock and algae into the vast wholeness of water.
We are many!
I’m in a lake now, coolly and calmly merging into the completeness of the liquid body.
Surface tension builds, flattens, presses in an invisible border with the air.
Other forces push and pull, and I am part of a swell rising and falling.
Crashing on the shore, dashing, scattering, sliding over the waterfall.
Down, ever down, bumping other molecules, rocks, sticks: below, below.
Emerging from the creek and undulating with the smoothness of the river.
We are moving!
Flowing slowly downward, spiraling eddies in the green depths and currents.
Rolling rapids and pounding waterfalls again and again, mixed with silt and minerals.
Drawn ever downward, seeking the prime sea level of surface tension.
Sensing salt and silt and minerals; slowing down and surging with the loving lunar pull.
Greater and greater numbers are we, the elemental sea; the fountain of life and creation.
I am a wave!
Swelling and surging, crashing surf and sand, crawling drunk with expended power.
Pooling, pounding, splashing along the shore; warmed and soothed by the sun’s paternal rays.
Changing, shifting, atoms and electrons excited, energized, jostling, and jumping erratically.
Pulling apart from my brothers, bonds broken, molecules spreading apart.
Transformed once more, drifting free in the air, rising with warm updrafts in the vapor.
I am flying!
Soaring, drifting, attracted to other molecules, making chains and clusters and clouds.
Feeling the conjunctions of hydrogen bonds link and unlink.
Finally, we are gathered together in a stable group.
Our pooled weight tips the balance in favor of gravity, and we fall as a droplet from the cloud.
Released from the drift of cumulus breath, driven with a downward purpose again.
I am falling!
Colder and colder through layers of air, patterns forming as the templates of stars.
Linking scaffolds of molecules in a fractal matrix of frozen crystal.
Gliding, glistening, floating softly down to drift and nestle with other snowflakes.
Weight compressing; crystal patterns joining, solidifying, expanding and contracting.
Wedged in a small glacial crevasse in the mountains.
I am a molecule.
I am a star.
Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup.
You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot.
Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.”
— Bruce Lee