Watersheds of Caring
Where the boundaries of belonging and tributaries of compassion meet.
“Poetry asks us to look beyond words.
Asks us to seek the kind of blur where clarity
is held in combining ideas.”
While wandering through the realms of bioregional thought and practice, this poem bubbled up, like a spring.
May these words flow through you, as a river of life.
May this poem remind us that boundaries are not walls but watersheds — permeable, alive, and bound by care and compassion.
Watersheds of Caring
Where does your care begin
And where does it end?
Caring flows like water through a watershed
Starting as droplets in the headwaters,
Gathering in rivulets and streams,
Pooling in the valleys of our attention.
Yet unlike water,
Caring doesn't always follow
The path of least resistance.
We care deeply for the near and visible:
The face across the breakfast table,
The dog whose trust rests fully in our care,
The garden where we know each plant by name.
But the boundaries of caring are not fixed by proximity.
They expand and contract like a pounding heart
Following the pulse of our awareness,
With our willingness to see beyond the fence line,
Beyond the horizons that separate “here” from “there”.
When we understand that the air in our lungs
Was exhaled by forests we may never visit,
That the water in our tea once was a cloud
Dancing above mountains we may never climb,
Boundaries dissolve like morning fog.
Caring becomes less about distance
And more about relationship.
Less about what we can see
And more about what binds us.
The food on our plate depends on seeds
Grown in soil we may never touch,
Nourished by minerals we'll never see.
Our coffee comes from hands we'll never hold,
Picked under skies we'll never stand beneath.
Born from sweat we'll never taste.
The boundaries of caring
Are not walls but membranes,
Permeable and alive, in constant flux.
They are not limitations but invitations—
To deeply sense the invisible relational web
To understand that “mine”, “yours” and “theirs”
Are stories we tell that both protect and blind us.
So above, so below.
Our caring is the invisible mycelial flow
Which only the depths of our hearts truly know.
It’s the connective tissue that unites
The inner and outer bounds,
The sky and earthly grounds.
What would change
If the boundaries
Of our caring extended
To the microbial life beneath the pavement,
To the air currents carrying birds across continents,
To the human-being with views not our own,
To the watershed that quenches our thirst?
What would change
If we care for life and place
Not because we own it,
But because we belong to it?
Poetry’s Flow
“Prose is to poetry as walking is to dancing.”
— Paul Valéry
There’s something magical about poetry that prose is unable to express. Let me know if you’d love to receive more poems like this.
Really enjoyed this. look forward to the Nomad article!
Beautiful ode to caring for the world as an act of caring for ourselves (because they are after all one and the same), and to our utter wovenness with all things - thanks for sharing :)