current events
If you’re strong and swim like hell, prevail against crazy current, there’s a niche behind the falls you can clamber into…deafening susurration, outside world out of sight…venture head out part way, hair pounded clean by sheer force of cold water…
Above, a small river headed toward towering rocks…does it push a log, will the log fall over, fatally striking you in hiding place? Thrilling…
Uisce beath, (ishkah bayah) “water of life”, i.e. whiskey, water of death, wet brain, alcohol-related encephalopathy, draining brain of coherence…though desiccated brains don’t do so well with dusty tomes sucking out their moisture, causing reading-related encephalopathy…
This stuff is everywhere, carries life of countless varieties, fish, mammal, aquatic reptilian, avian, arthropod, mollusk, nematode, weed, algae, coliform bacteria…
Carries death by different routes: predation, drowning, smashing against rocks by inexorable power, boat speed, unwise dives, undertow, electric ray, electric eel, piranha, hypothermia, cholera, dysentery, need we say more? Sometimes booze gives a little push…
Did Natalie Wood get shoved into the drink? Was Moby Dick misunderstood? Captain Ahab never breast-fed? (latter unlikely). Sweet human milk, mostly H2O, for many the first flavor post-birth, other than a bit of blood, H2O also. This writer had teeth by four months (verified by family legend) so abruptly weaned; is this why he writes poetry? (Unlikely). Does dripping Swampthing have a dripping Swamp Spouse? (Unlikely).
Is the liquid our body’s composed of hungry to return to source…by pissing, spitting, weeping, breaking of water, bleeding, sweating, burial at sea, or in the sponge of earth? Once the water’s gone there’s very little left but bones. Where do we float to after death?
Some geysers stink of rotten egg sulfur; low tide there is salty fishy rot; bottled spring water often comes from taps; tap water sometimes smells like chlorinated swimming pools…does fluoride have a taste? Phone says no.
How many messages does this ubiquitous fluid communicate, by sea mammals or others, songs picked up by electronics eventually transmitted via auditory nerves from fluid filled human cochlea?
Back in the susurrating niche, pounded by thoughts and emotions, cleansed of non-essentials, exhausted, invigorated, remembering where and what we come from…
Hydrate.
~ Wry Welwood
21st of June 2021
Written in response to J.D. Harms’ word prompt: improvise, in Scrittura.
With thanks to Jessica Lee McMillan of Scrittura.