Backwater Rising

Minor floods require just a nod, yes, the water is high, you wear boots or get your feet wet, watch where you step. I've got a knot in my shoulder, from mopping. I use a 28 ounce head, depend on a kind of perpetual movement to keep things going, you stop, everything is lost. Need to get below the floodwall tomorrow, the water is high. Boone Coleman's fields are flooded. The racetrack is awash. The floodplain is at play. Begs the question, where does the dirt go? Always downstream. What made the Nile basin so fertile for so long before Aswan. Why dams fail. Silt. Fines. Eventually dirt wins. Maybe twenty dam/locks on the Ohio but they've learned, the Army Corp, give them credit, they know they have to allow local flooding, and the river deposits. There's a fractal edge to local geography, defined by landforms you wouldn't notice otherwise, the way a road berm becomes a barrier. A bottom pasture becomes swamp. I can watch this from my perch, not unlike that noisy crow perched over the outhouse, I may have to shoot that bastard, he's become way too familiar, he knows when I void my bowels and sings scratchy songs from the fifty's. I'm upset by the turn of events, wishing things to be otherwise, I understand they're not, make what adjustments I can. What flies in your face. I have to turn the music off. I don't want to be mad, but I am. Certain things upset me and I'm pissed by the action of others. In a perfect world there wouldn't be these Whip-Poor-Wills, but there they are, resplendent. Usually I roll a smoke and smile. Sometimes I wonder why I'm here, in place merely to notice a bird. I honestly don't know, I dig at it, struggle toward definition, but I don't know. Maybe it's enough that I make you laugh. Maybe that's the be-all and end-all. However you respond is the most important thing.

Tom

I apologize, I've been reading way too much Thoreau.