The Cloud Drinks from Our Well

Author’s NoteThis poem reflects on the hidden material costs of artificial intelligence infrastructure through the imagined voice of a community living near a data center. Whereas digital technologies are often described through metaphors of the “cloud,” the poem repositions the cloud as a thirsty, grounded, and extractive presence that depends on water, land, energy, and local sacrifice. Centering the village well as both a material resource and a symbol of collective memory, the poem explores how technological progress can obscure ecological strain, unequal development, and the everyday labor of communities who bear its consequences. Through images of women collecting water, farmers facing cracked soil, children encountering dry taps, and elders noticing ecological silence, the poem offers a creative anthropological reflection on infrastructure, environmental justice, and the uneven distribution of technological futures. It asks how innovation is measured, whose losses remain uncounted, and what kinds of community knowledge are ignored when progress is narrated only through investment, efficiency, and digital advancement.