Water World

June 2, 2013

At the head of the island which is just below the dam, there is a small quiet space, a pool where the reflections of the grasses settle and shimmer. But the river races along on either side as if the right and left banks worry that they will be separated forever. Where they join at the downstream end of the island, you may spot mallards resting and dabbling in the calm eddies.
Does water have a memory? Eventually, the rivers and seas are the depositories of all our innocent and murderous launderings. They are the library and witness to the wine spilled, the blood dabbed from a child's knee, and the runoff of our too-green lawns, the hair and soap and waste and rainbow flecks from the sky. Does it also contain the frozen footprints that the ducks left in the ice last winter? Can it contain, like a paper envelope, my clandestine cat-like thoughts and ship them around the wet world? And that object, bobbing down the river… is that a letter for me? From, you? Marvelous!