Well hello. I’ve been aiming my way back here for a long time. I’m sitting in my Writing Club with middle schoolers who are happily typing away on their own work. I was looking for something to work on when I stumbled upon this poem.

Do you ever have the experience of finding something you wrote long ago, and you say “Hey, wait, this is pretty good”? Well that’s what happened here. I hope you think so, too.

And I hope I’m back. Momentous things may be happening for my writing soon, and I’d love to share them with your!

All Water’s Moments

The stream is creating its course as it flows,  
not carving it 
into the rocks and soil; 
it is wearing them down,  
so slowly and quickly 
that it is happening in two  
different  
seconds. 

This stream’s wet pattern is the laying of itself into the silt and stone, 
ever creating and sustaining its path. 
Thus it changes  
always  
now. 

Thus it is creating the pattern of its own tone, 
A tone made up of all its water and of all its moments: 
Its great single sound 
is a mingling of large and small waterfalls,  
spigots, 
ripples, V-shaped like bird migrations, 
spouts and shallows; 
water caught in rock-trap cataracts rasping and splashing, 
water deep bass in shadowed crevices,  
pouring so thick it is both clear and obscuring, 
full flowing into the pool it is ever carving.  

Only the dirt and rock can feel this streams underside, touch its other surface. 
Unless I will lay in it,  
dig myself down so the top of my skin  
is even with the skin of the planet, 
let the stream cover me 
wet me, 
yes, drown me, 

But before that I will feel the sliding of its bottom water 
On top of me. 

But I will not,  
because it is too cold,  
and I would die. 

In the ever-moments I have with this stream, 
It lets me see a little of the slowness 
that is hidden in its rushing, 

All of its flickering frozen moments,  
numberless as stars and pages. 

It slows down only enough to define its slipping away. 
 
And I see it dousing a stone, browning its tan rock skin, 
And I see it part around a boulder, and the sound it makes 
must be that of water tearing. 

I see where the waterfall has caused a spout at its base, 
so some of the water that funnels down  
curves back up 
and reaches its top and comes 
down 

so that splashes  
                         jump  

                                       off   

and I have to think it is playing, the water is playing, because if I follow a splash  
down 
I see it form,  
bend out,  
come apart and arc a diver’s curve,  
and then there are so many others,  
brief splashes,  
about to fall back into the flow,  
and I laugh,  
which is why I think it’s playing,  
because it’s not right to just stand by a stream 
and laugh at water, 
is it? 

And it asks me, 
in its stream language of gurgle and burble and moan,  
and patter and drip,  
Of low boom, 
it asks, “can you see now  
flowing by?” 

and the sound drops back down, and there is the water, thin and fast, and there is Thoreau, of course, he’s always hanging around by the stream, and he says, “now now now now now now now now now now now now now,” until I just about hit him, and I’m about to shout, “I get it!” but he has that look on his face, the one he gets, and you realize that in that man’s mind he is only trying to teach you, and he is taking this seriously, but he also sees the humor in it, and the inherent absurdity, but also the incredible meaningfulness of it all, also that I am beneath his contempt, that we are just humble specks hurtling through space, that we are all one, and we are all separate, and how can you hit all that?  I wouldn’t know where to aim.