Once I stood on a bench looking out the kitchen window
As the river surged in full flood
Bringing benches, picnic tables and even a cow into brief and tumbled view
At that age it wasn’t alarming
Just another strange delight
A river full of non sequiturs
That had grown from kitten to lion in the night
Once I crested a hill at speed
Into a grey dismay of spilled banks
My feet were ankle deep but the car made it to the other side
That time
Unlike a Christmas day when the current was overwhelming
Lifting the car easily and tossing it into a copse of trees
Making a present of the current experientially
Once I filled sandbags to bolster dikes
Putting my back into the urgency of holding back a deluge
Surrounded by the camaraderie of warriors
Battling overwhelming odds with grains of sand
Once I threw rocks into the river
And they disappeared like magic
Or into the magic of burst waters
Preceding some new arrival
Swept out of the flood of creation
I have seen floods
And I’ve been touched by floods
But I do not really know floods
In all their rushed intensity
Except to say I know them well enough
To stay away
David Trudel © 2013
Very powerful!
Thanks Seb.