praise to the tar seeps
sticking together this
matter: this water, this
art, tar, mud, sky, brine, 
salt, sea, rocks, birds
feathering into focus:
wingbeats and wind,
sand crunches 
underfoot
all matters: 
all waters
retreat, inscribing
—lake level
—lake level
—lake level
revealing
less snow
more seeps
where language eludes
(disarticulated: bones,
words) getting stuck
in “death traps”  
as a “dead sea”
lives as a body 
of water, of land
among bodies
(human, animal, botanical)
interacting as mineral
extract-
ions seep
into our cells,
infinitesimal spirals
transforming
as we sing: praise

Gretchen Ernster Henderson voices support for Great Salt Lake through her book, Life in the Tar Seeps: A Spiraling Ecology from a Dying Sea, and Dear Body of Water: a collaborative poetic water-harvesting project using mail-art and digital participation to address bodies of water as fellow beings on this Earth to cultivate care for watersheds.