Voices of the Waters
by Kelli Hedding, Copyright March 5, 2008, all rights reserved. 359 views
I had gone to the park with my brother’s and Dad to play a game of disk golf. I had thrown my disc near a storm sewer. As I leaned down to pick it up I heard the excited voices of the swirling and swerving water below. There were bars like a jail covering the opening. The water only had a few seconds of daylight before it was sucked into the darkness of another tunnel.
I stopped and stared in a trance. I think my brothers were calling to me but I barely heard them.
I knelt down above the bars straining to understand the excited boasting of the rushing water, for that is what it was doing, boasting. The waves and sloshes were rushing over each other anxious to tell where they had been and excited to get to where they were going. They were full of energy! I wished that I could understand their language. Even if I could understand, I doubt if I could have heard what they were saying, so garbled were their voices as they wildly babbled on and on and over each other.
I tried to imagine where they had been. Had they met Noah? Had they slid over the rocks of the Grand Canyon? Maybe they had traveled across the ocean from Africa or Asia? Perhaps they had been part of an ice flow in Antarctica? Maybe they had fallen on Mt. Everest and traveled all the way from that great height? Maybe they had been admired as part of a thousand different waterfalls all over the world? All of them were calling out and rushing over each other as they excitedly told about the places they had been. I found myself leaning forward with my face close to the metal bars straining, straining to understand.
As I watched the water it struck me how enthusiastic it was even now as it flowed through the storm sewer. Surprisingly it did not seem to mind. It seemed joyous! It did not seem to care how disparaging the storm sewer was after all of the great places it had been. It seemed so happy just to be moving. Maybe that was why the water was so excited? Perhaps every bit of that water had been stuck in a stinky, stagnant pool once and it was rejoicing now to be moving on.
Eventually I was torn away from the swirling water of the storm sewer in order to continue the game of disk golf. I continued the game but I couldn’t stop thinking about the voices of the water. Maybe I couldn’t understand what they were saying as they told the stories of where they had been but I certainly understood their refrain: “rejoice where you are; keep moving forward; keep traveling on; don’t become stagnant for then you will become a stench”.
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