Water is always with you. You undulate upon its lap until it breaks and you drop into waiting arms and hands. From baths to strides you swim, nourished by the sustenance water gives, just as one day

you may be drawn to its rhythmic code:

despite gravity, water ascends like faith, on bridges of fog and mist, bringing full ladles to rumbling skies that cascade in torrents down mountains and hills, filling the reservoirs of roots in fields and forests and streams, restoring over and over the oceans and seas.

Every moment, water moves forward even as it wills itself back to the clouds— much as one growing progeny within may absorb the ways of water and innately sense that she owns not the child, but rather the charge passing through her,

and the lives to whom this charge is given are renewed once again when this child reaches back and up to the parents of the parents

whose currents brought them here.

-John Middlebrook, Wilderness House Literary Review

Tagged: Cascade the Generations poem, contemporary poet, John Middlebrook, John Middlebrook poetry, lit journal, love of water, magic of water, modern poetry, poetry, water, water poetry, Wilderness House Literary Review