Dave Bonta's short poem plays with the word "water" until it starts to feel worn out. In the first stanza, water becomes a book made up of tautologies, statements that just say the same thing again. Water is water, wave follows wave, and the ear grows tired of hearing it. Even the title repeats itself, "Water water," as if the poem is demonstrating the problem it describes.
The second stanza moves from the abstract to the personal. The speaker wakes in the night on a waterbed, and the final line, "weary journal," seems to fold everything together: the book, the bed, and the speaker's own tired record of sleepless hours. Judging by the wording, the speaker feels worn down and stuck in a loop, unable to rest or find anything new to say. The mood is quiet, drowsy, and a little wry. There is something gently funny about lying on water while thinking about water, and the poem's tiredness comes through in its very short, repetitive lines.