Water Crisis
by Jeannie Wallace McKeown
My bucket is flimsy,
no good for heavy lifting
although water is heavy –
ask the women who walk kilometres
to brown rivers, or township taps,
25 litre containers carried
on their heads.
Privilege works in strange ways.
I walk only to my back garden,
to the green tank on its plinth.
I bend to half-fill my bucket,
carry it through the back door.
This first ten litres is for
the paper-clogged toilet bowl.
Another half-bucket drawn,
tipped into the sink
to soak supper dishes.
I am grateful beyond similes
for last week’s rain;
not enough, never enough,
but the tanks are full.
No amount of rain
will solve the water crisis.
The treatment plant fails,
pump hydraulics grinding to a halt;
machinery rusts unrepaired.
Under the roads, water pipes split their seams.
Raw sewage gathers in dips and streams.
Each evening a wave of humanity
heads home, west to east,
carrying a river’s worth of water,
captured and bottled
in cheap 5 litre plastic,
transported to homes
with dry taps
and no backyard tanks.
