Author Archives: Maggie C

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About Maggie C

Stained glass artist, writer, respecter of life.

Dancing Water (photo essay)

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Along a street that I have driven hundreds of times in the past, my eyes were drawn this morning to a water feature in front of an office building. The early morning sunlight sparkled brilliantly off the cascading stream that cycled through a structure of concrete, rough boulders and river rock. I pulled over to check it out.

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The fountain itself isn’t much to look at. With a casual glance from the street, one sees a sheet of water pouring over a concrete crossbeam and disappearing amidst some nondescript boulders.

Closer examination reveals that the water has been intentionally channeled (“choreographed,” one might say) to flow in streams that dance and glisten in the sunlight as they freefall to the rocks below.

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I am reminded of the phrase “water over the dam,” which implies that something is over and done with and cannot be retracted or reconsidered. How many of us live as though the decisions and actions of our past have left us in a freefall of dire consequences over which we have no control?

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Maybe water over the dam should mean that whatever happened in our past, “good” or “bad,” served to push us beyond sitting stagnant behind a wall of mediocrity, and has freed us to dance and sparkle in the sunlight on our way to something new.

5

We can choose to see the fountain as half empty or half full. Oh, wait, that’s an entirely different analogy. Never mind.

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I’m glad I stopped to look at the fountain, and I’m going to try to be more observant of my surroundings in the future. Who knows? Maybe tomorrow I’ll find some water under the bridge.

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Upriver

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water2
My current home is
ninety-five miles upriver from
the coast where I grew up.

Had I allowed myself to merely drift,
I would now be thirty-two leagues out to sea,
floundering at the mercy and
whims of capricious waves.

Instead,
I am resting on a verdant shore
watching the sunlight sparkle
across gentle ripples of water
under an azure sky.

Sometimes it pays
to swim against the tide.

Photo101 Assignment Three: Water

World Oceans Day (photo essay)

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Expansive and deep,
beautiful but volatile,
ample force to turn
vessels to splinters.

ocean3

Teeming with life,
ceaselessly churning,
an indefatigable
dynamo.

ocean4

Kissed by the sun,
caressed by the winds,
extolled by poets
and sailors alike.

ocean1

Sustainer of life
as we know it on Earth,
yet with all its
grandeur and might…

still fragile.

ocean2

What could be big enough to threaten and endanger our oceans (and thus our planet)?

Microplastics.

Microplastics particles, which are smaller than five millimeters in size, likely pose a massive environmental and human health risk when they enter our natural waterways.

Toxins including DDT, BPA and pesticides adhere to the particles, and because they can resemble plankton, they’re often ingested by small aquatic life. The toxins biomagnify as they move up the food chain, accumulating in birds, fish, marine mammals and potentially humans.

Adventurers and Scientists for Conservation (ASC)

June 8th, 2015 is World Oceans Day.

What can we do to help “turn the tide” on the dangerous amounts of plastics polluting the oceans?

  • We can work to increase awareness of the issue. Here’s a video of how one artist is doing that: Invisible Ocean: Plankton and Plastic. But it doesn’t have to be that complicated.
  • We can choose not to buy and use products that contain plastic microbeads (as in certain brands of toothpaste, facial cleansers, soaps…).
  • We can avoid using disposable plastic bags. (Take the Better Bag Challenge.)

These may seem like small steps toward tackling such a large problem ( just “a drop in the ocean,” so to speak), but that’s how things get done. Small actions lead to big changes.

Let’s act today.

starfish with rock

Thanks to Jane (Just Another Nature Enthusiast) and her challenge at UNLESS: Earth-friendly Chroniclers: Challenge 11~ “Healthy Oceans – Healthy Planet” for the inspiration.