<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div class="">The Source</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><font size="2" class=""><i class="">Water is the least environmentally impactful</i></font></div><div class=""><font size="2" class=""><i class="">beverage and bottled water is the most environmentally </i></font></div><div class=""><font size="2" class=""><i class="">responsible packaged drink choice.</i></font></div><div class=""><font size="2" class=""><i class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>- INTERNATIONAL BOTTLED WATER ASSOCIATION</i></font></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Far from these woods and this river, far from the Source,</div><div class="">in a made place not easy to comprehend,</div><div class="">harder than woods and river but much less hard,</div><div class="">where sky and grass are priceless or must be shared,</div><div class="">and shade is rectilinear and smooth;</div><div class="">where the scourge teems upward in tall elaborate mounds,</div><div class="">and doom seeps outward, settling a dull gray crust</div><div class="">over what once were woods and river like these;</div><div class="">in the back of a double-locked shelter in a room where salt</div><div class="">and bread are kept safe from the rain, from rats and starlings,</div><div class="">in a humming iron chest that holds inside it</div><div class="">fresh weather like that of a day between fall and winter;</div><div class="">on a crowded shelf of that chest stands a vessel pressed</div><div class="">from molecules of degraded plantlife and creatures;</div><div class="">and there, in that thin vessel—that is where</div><div class="">the creature, exiled forever from the Source,</div><div class="">further and further cut off from woods and river,</div><div class="">keeps for itself eight handfuls of the river.</div><div class="">It opens the door of the chest. It stands and drinks.</div><div class="">The once-living bottle is see-through like the contents,</div><div class="">the label of vegetable fiber the color of envy.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>- Joshua Mehigan</div></body></html>