Water-Wealth

What will happen
when all of our water
is owned by Nestle?

How will we gauge
rich and poor?

What will happen
when all of the rainwater
is bought and sold
just after it is filtered
to remove the wonder
of what burning coal
gives back to our clouds?

What will become
of men and women that
own wells and aquifers?

Hold that glass - NOW.
Look deeply into its
crystalline cool and
slake your thirst - NOW.
Wealth will be changing
commodities sooner
than you believe possible.

One more time
we will watch a
basic human need slip
from being a basic
human right, to property
for barons to wield and
wend amid the portfolios
of their rising hoards.

There was a day
when a stream, and a spring,
a well and an ocean
were things we shared
among ourselves.

Gone are those days.
Now, only now,
comes their passing –
hastening slowly.
How will you
observe this change?

How?

picture and poem reprinted from:

The Lion & The Lamb, Spring 2017