Did you know the Missouri River โ also belovedly known as the Big Muddy, the Mighty Mo, and Mniลกoลกe (“turbid water”) by the Dakota and Lakota โ is the longest river on the North American continent?! This wide river of silt and sediment churns its way for over 2000 miles from western Montana down across and through six other states to merge with the Mississippi and on to the Gulf of Mexico, and its watershed drains around 1/6 (!!!) of the United States’ landmass over an area of 500,000 square miles. If you’re not a numbers person (๐ถit’s me, hiiiiiii!๐ถ), here’s a visual representation of the breadth of the Missouri’s drainage basin, highlighted in light green below:
It will never not be astonishing to me that here in Mid-Missouri we are so close to such a robust and essential body of water and river-system, one that I believe deserves our reverence and respect. If you feel the same way, I encourage you to participate in Dear Body of Water, a communal interdisciplinary art project dreamed up from the scientifically poetic mind and experience of Gretchen E. Henderson. Henderson launched Dear Body of Water out of the University of Arizona Poetry Center in the August 2023 ahead of the publication of her book “Life in the Tar Seeps: A Spiraling Ecology of a Dying Sea,” with the goal of inviting humans everywhere to reflect on, consider, thank and address the bodies of water โ including our own, as the human body is 50-60% water โ that engender life on our blue planet, whose surface is itself 71% water.
Here’s the founding poem of the project, a gorgeous call to water-beings everywhere ๐ฆ:
DEAR BODY OF WATER,
to write a love letter to you
is like catching waves. Your waters
slip through my grasp. Even
in stillness, you move:
evaporating into the atmosphere.
In this closed basin, with no
outlets to seas, rain unsettles
sky. Lessening snow melts
down rivers to your saline body.
Fewer birds flock to marshes
and habitable shores and islands,
some fossilizing into fragments
of feather and bone. Microbial
life swims finless, luminous and immune
to the burning sun. Time is
not a river here, trapped as
temperatures rise. As your
shores retreat, my sea inside
melts into watering eyes.
The human body is mostly water.
The planet is mostly water.
We are all bodies of water.
Rivers and oceans,
aquifers and bays, streams and tides.
Dear Great Salt Lake,
dear bodies of water,
dear you and me: do we
miss perceiving our once-and-future
interrelation? What happens if
we turn fear to care, lost and found,
grieving into deeper loving?
Wake our hearts. In the palms
of our hands, wash over
a few words to share,
DEAR BODY OF WATER:
There are a couple of ways to participate in this ongoing “interrelation,” and the project will be soliciting responses across the many bodies of water of the world through the rest of 2024.
- Visit the website for the project and upload or submit a digital response to the various prompts Henderson has offered (or respond in the way your beloved body of water calls to you).
- Pick up a printed or blank (add your own art!) postcard on the Teen Display at the Columbia Public Library (first floor, under the fiber-art otters ๐ฆฆ), and mail in your response to the University of Arizona Poetry Center.
- Pick up aย thread card on the Teen Display at the Columbia Public Library (first floor, under the fiber-art otters ๐ฆฆ) and upload your response. You can also submit a thread card virtually.
- Print your own postcard to mail in. Note: if printing a postcard to mail on your own, make sure that it follows the USPS guidelines for postcards.
- blank postcard set โ add your own art!
- dear body of Water Postcard Set 1 โ Note: if printing out these DBRL-designed postcards on your own, make sure to select the “flip on long edge” option for double-sided printing.
- dear body of water postcard set 2 โ Note: if printing out these DBRL-designed postcards on your own, make sure to select the “flip on long edge” option for double-sided printing.
If you don’t want to share a response publicly, that’s okay, too. You can always view the map of the project to see other folks’ responses and then share your thoughts/feelings with whichever body of water you’d like in a more private ceremony โ even a small “thank you” under your breath or in your head as you approach your favorite creek or pond or puddle would be wonderful. ๐
Here’s one of my responses, for the Grindstone Creek that skirts one of my favorite places in the world, the Grindstone Nature Area:
WATERSHED
how might I wear
the river’s heart?
and how many hearts
swirl beneath its sheets
heavy with iridescence? I draw
each slipping tear
each soothing wash
upward
near the dear
parts of my shrewing
self I wish I could shred
but don’t. yes, or okay, or โ the water
says. let your rash
of emptiness rush raw
into rest.
