Like the Water
by George Sawaya
In the morning, when you wake and set out
Upon the world, you think,
Or somewhere know far inside your head,
A truck might catch you in its grill
As you’re hopping from a curb, or your chest might seize in
Upon itself, an injured heart collapsing like a cavern,
Or, even, during your commute you might
Hit a slick spot and careen through barriers
Down a hill.
But then there is the weather.
What are we to make of God's great finger
Stabbing at the earth? The hoary drill
Tracing wild, esoteric letters
Through soil and businesses and homes -
Through lives - Casting the weight of heavy-hearts
Like paper dolls into the feral gales?
Must we say, "Oh, well"? Rebuild and forget?
Or beat our heads with closed fists
And remember?
Our strength is not the shoulder drives the nail,
Nor the hand that guides the saw. It's something simple,
something
Clearer: Water – we remember – when parted or disturbed,
Comes so quickly back together.
Water, (whether it drops in rain or runs, or is shredded as it
falls
By weather we did not recall when climbing in our cars
Or stepping from the curb) remembers, always, the shape it had
before it all.
And so we drive the hammer, guide the saw, beat our
Temples bloody, knuckles raw against our skulls,
And howl as we remember:
Not the grey-wind's ferocious spool, but the faces;
Not the knotted timber missiles, but the tears; not the castles
We once built only to have torn asunder, but the will
We found to piece them back together.
And, like water, we resume a shape which (though not quite
whole)
Might be something of the same as it was before that April day
When our dimensions
Changed.