Do we realise how much we owe to water? Do we know that we are mostly made of water?
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What if water had never kissed earth’s face?
mountains miles high would cover the surface
for cold could crack rock, but not render to soil,
without erosion by rain and fraction by ice.
For life to arise from inanimate matter
a critical catalyst must nurture change.
Without a fluid nursery, no replication or fusion,
no lucky chances for new cell conjunctions.
Then cyanobacteria photosynthesised water,
used hydrogen for energy, left oxygen as waste,
which built over aeons a thin protective ether
to filter the sunshine, before life first formed.
We breathed in water, then rose from the sea,
to survive in the gas from water’s destruction.
This ethereal shield safely blocked harmful rays,
saving the fragile from our Sun’s burning rage.
We are accidental treasures with a liquid history,
Water brims our bodies in a complex birth-right.
Without water’s brush to destiny’s dry palette,
flesh, feathers, flowers and fur could never be.
