Flood

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