I've been thinking about water.
Rivers, creeks, lakes, ponds, oceans, bays, water.
Rains that falls with a hunger, that swell the swollen streams, till the banks give way, and the water, no longer contained, travels down city streets, into house foundations, across airport runways.
Water.
Un-constrained.
Humans bring out the iron, bulldozers, backhoes, excavators, loaders, digging out the gravel, restoring the banks, fixing the culverts, hoping to shore up the boundaries before the next storm approaches.
The National Weather Service issued a flood warning for Seward for Saturday evening into Sunday. The town issued a State of Emergency after heavy rain compromised the train tracks, bridges, and streets last Saturday and again on Tuesday.
Water.
Yesterday the wind raged as the next low pressure moved into the Gulf.
Last night the stars emerged; and this morning I wake to calm seas and a sky no longer dressed in only dark shades of grey. Its hard to imagine another storm marching to shore with its army of rain.
Years ago, the Army Corp of Engineers re-directed Lowell Creek by digging a tunnel through Bear Mountain, creating a man-made waterfall in an effort to save the town from flooding.
Last Saturday, the waterfall turned black with gravel and almost took out the bridge that connects those of us who live on Lowell Point with all the amenities of town. The police issued a warning early in the morning that the bridge might be washed out-- but thankfully, the folks from Public Works and Metco stayed ahead of the angry waterfall, with their heavy equipment, beginning the excavation work at 1:00 am and continuing off and on all week long. Bad-ass indeed!
(Photos by Alaska Aerial Technologies.)
Water.
We hold a surplus up here in Seward Alaska, buckets overfilling, creeks careening into culverts, rapids running along roadways, a sky wet with angst--and somewhere a child longs to quench her endless thirst.
Somewhere a family watches their crops die from endless days of nothing but sun.
A wildfire rages as a community prays for rain.
Water.
If I held the power to redirect the rain to the barren lands, I'd do it with the blink of my tired eyes, and yet if I've learned anything from this earth of ours its that us humans aren't nearly as powerful as we claim.
We can change the course of a river, for a spell, but water always finds its way downhill. Water doesn't follow man-made rules or read the signs we post along the boundary zones.
Water knows no bounds.
No borderlines.
Water.
Sometime before I had children, while falling in love with Nick, I was thinking about a lack of water and wrote the following draft for a poem:
What More is There to Say About Water
Take away showers,
hot water first
till the last cold drop
rolls, to where the creek
use to be.
No more ice cubes to chew, to rub on a forehead, to soften a wound—
ice trays, ice coolers, ice skates all past
memorabilia, foreign like girdles,
but luxuries of yesterday.
No glaciers to climb, traverse, or gaze at from cruise ships.
What are cruise ships? Your children’s children ask.
You're thirsty for words.
Forget about bubble baths,
don’t even think about hot tubs,
swimming pools or watering the grass.
Grass grows brown now, apples leave,
tomatoes slip silently downstairs
never to return, not even
for marinara or ketchup.
Forget about fishing, waterslides, breathtaking
dives from cliffs, with or without waterfalls.
If backyard mountains can be ocean beds.
If a cool summer rain can burn.
Then what’s left to say
about skinny dipping in warm salt water,
soft wet kisses,
wombs,
tears,
when there are
so many
to shed.
****
Somewhere in between droughts and floods, lays the balance between empty buckets and ones that overflow.
If only we could harness that place where everyone has just enough.
No more, no less.
Just enough.
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