water out of tap collage - appreciation for water

This week’s prompt for the Gratitude Journal: Sketch or illustrate your appreciation for clean drinking water.

In thinking about this prompt, I recalled a poem that I taught my senior students some years ago. The Wheelbarrow, by William Carlos William, describes a “red wheelbarrow glazed with rain water”.

I wasn’t sure that I could convey the importance of water as it made the red so much more vivid on that wheelbarrow. With few words, William Carlos William created images in the reader’s mind.

Could I illustrate the shimmer on that wheelbarrow to suggest that rain makes the red so much more vibrant, and the wheelbarrow that much more interesting? I didn’t think my illustration would be as successful as William Carlos William’s poem. And then, how would I show my appreciation for clean drinking water?

In the end, I chose a simple tap to illustrate the ease with which we obtain water every day. We don’t even think about it when we run the water for our showers, our baths, our washing machines. In Canada, we are fortunate that the water flowing out of the tap in our homes is fresh, thirst quenching, clean water.

Although the quotation was written in 1732, it speaks to us even today and warns that we shouldn’t wait for a shortage to appreciate water’s true value.