A BLESSING FOR THE WATER by Judith Roche

blessing for the water

 

beginning no end
circle the earth
blesséd water
blood of life

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STATEMENT

This is the text of a public art installation at the Brightwater Treatment Plant in King County, Washington. Jane Tsong is the visual artist, who proposed making three “blessings” for the water treatment plant: for water, air and the biosolids. I wrote the blessing for the water and for the Biosolids. The short shown poem here is the water blessing. The letters are cut out of steel and larger than they look in the photo- the first line is almost 4 foot tall. When fully functional (which it is not yet) water will be sluicing over the text and it will be, by design, barely
readable – but not totally obscured- by the rushing water.

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Judith Roche has added text to several public art installations in and around Seattle, Washington. Her most recent book is Wisdom of the Body, Black Heron Press, and won an American Book Award.