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