River as teacher

Hundred year event

They said it again

Children swept away

Freak storm

Nobody's fault

Act of God

Every hundred years

I tell you what,

Don't lie to me!

Don't lie to yourself!

Have you ever walked where a river rose

And settled back down

Into its usual channel?

Just like a raving drunk

Who is shouting,
I am unwanted!

Nobody ever loved me.

I can do anything I want

To my family

My friends

My dog

My people

Humanity

(Because deep down they hate themself)

Nothing I do or say will change anything.

I am responsible for no one and nothing.

The next morning:

Who broke that?

Who rose up like a hundred year flood

Who swept those children away?

Who was that?

Who was here?

What power just came and went?

Every hundred years

The river says,

See?

This is what I can do.

And you are just like me.

Every hundred years.

There, and there and there

And there and there . . .

Has anyone stopped to think that

There is here?

And every hundred years over there a bridge falls into that gorge

And every hundred years over there that town burns down

And every hundred years over here there

Is an outbreak

And every hundred years

A twister wraps a child up in her blanket

And deposits her unscratched in a tree

Or does something miraculous that makes people wonder

Every hundred years someone sees God looking in the window

And every hundred years an animal says something in English

And every hundred years someone lives to 110

And she can tell about the last time the river rampaged like that

Or when aliens took a whole herd of horses away

Right out of the barn without a trace

Sometimes I feel like I'm living on a flood plain

True or false?

Rivers are shapeshifters.

Rivers are alive.

Rivers have been mistreated.

Rivers do not hold grudges.

We can learn from rivers.

If you answered "true" X 5

You are right.

One time I walked the tow path

Along the Potomac

And it took me a while to realize that

The junk in the trees 30 feet up

In the cottonwoods

Was left there by a flashflood

Then I began to feel like

I was not as alone as I thought

On that hothouse day

Someone was shadowing me

Someone all caked in mud.

A squirrel fell out of a tree and caught itself

On a branch right in front of my face

And bobbed up and down

Looking really confused.

I must have looked like God just then . . .

That night I camped next the river

As you can imagine I hardly slept

But I must have slept

Because I woke at dawn

To the sound of a clap

Of thunder