Trinity Bay<br > Where Fresh Water Meets the Sea<br > PREFACE<br >This collection isn t all romance and moonlight on the wake.<br >I I?ITER. Poems From the Rivers， Lakes， and Streams was inten&<br >more mean-spirited than the result. I wanted ang~ poems， rantin<br >hunmns have polluted their resources. I wanted measured proof<br >slatistics and facts stitched into the fabric of the poems. I wanted<br >allt provided by poets who often can be counted on fbr doing thei<br >~anted to shock the reader more often than we will. I was even will<br >over~ the head with horrifying reports scanned like poems. Y<br >disappointed that a relative lack of political poems has calmed this !:<br >influenced its tone.<br > What was predictable during the five-year national call for 1<br >our romance with rivers， lakes， and streams would resonate in our 1<br >fi;ll the poets are of water images， water language， how we court<br >lives around it， find healing in it and on it.<br > 1 am three thousand driving miles from my home. In Johl<br >the water is not fit to wash my hair due to agri-business groundw~<br >We had to spend nearly $4，000 on a water treatment system for Pud~<br >order to assure healthful drinking， bathing， and cleaning water. Joh~<br >20 miles from Columbus， where the Scioto River slogs along with h<br >thing about it， and whose banks are rarely visited by fishers or hikeJ<br >on water three thousand miles from home.<br > In Columbus the beautiful-sounding Scioto River is of<br >remote in the middle of a ciV of a million. People "camp <br >undisturbed nearly at the foundations of our skyscrapers. These cm<br >who are homeless， know they will seldom be disturbed. Few want<br >the river unless desperate and alone.<br > Three thousand miles from home I find the flesh water of n<br >rivers， lakes， and streams clear as fairy-tale illustrations.<br > Trinity Bay， Newfoundland sparkles while the planet is r~<br >fi esh water--over 90% going to global industry， high-tech manul<br >industrial agriculture. I think of Africa where in some places the a<br >recharge: I think of places where families pay almost 25% of the<br >drinking water: I hear that in England 30% of the rivers are down t<br >|heir average depth and in some countries rivers are so contamim<br >water is unfit even for industrial use! Organizations and agencies<br >h，~ve published massively on the terrible condition of our water wc<br >[)nited Nations ret~orted that more than one billion people on Earth<br >