Water

Memories    
Feelings    
Sensations    
Hurt    
Healing    
Water    
    
When sheets of rain approached    
Those southern summers    
2 young girls, swimsuit clad,    
Would play    
Feet in the wet sand  
Fingers guiding little rivulets  
Relishing the splashing showers    
Then when it passed    
Mama met them on the porch    
With towels and warmth and laughs and hugs

Water    
   
Daddy built a cabin    
Basic frame with plywood walls    
2 lofts, wood stove in the center    
And a corrugated metal roof    
That rang a drumming concert    
For the sleepy girls    
On their front row cots in the loft    
Through southern thundershowers…    
When winter came,    
They’d heat a canning pot of water    
Poured into a galvanized tub    
Front & center to the stove for added warmth    
Baths were non-negotiable    
Even if it meant a Christmas dive    
In the lake nearby

Water

That lake!    
Usually a fun & happy place    
With watermelon summers    
Diving after neon-orange golf balls    
Swimming to the raft if it floated near enough    
Inner-tube, sunshine & friends

Until

It was just the family that day    
Mama, sitting in the shallows of the boat launch    
With a fussy baby boy,  
Trying to soothe the child    
When daddy flipped into a rage:
“NO CHILD OF MINE IS SCARED OF WATER”    
bellowing, he snatched up the babe    
Striding deeper
Angry
Horrified we watched as he
Submerged
Lifted up
Spluttering, Screams    
Down
Under
Up    
Splutter    
Scream    
Down    
Up    
Seemingly forever    
To background sounds of mother’s cries
Eventually    
A car approached    
The torment ended    
Father, mother, children
Quietly filled their car
And drove away

Water    
   
The logging pond with its little raft    
Was an escape    
A quiet place where fears could sink into the mire
For a time
An escape
From his rages
A place to forget
Homelessness & poverty    
A place to be alone    
Poling the wooden craft through the mucky waters    
Accidents and fears
Dropped
Plunked nicely to be hidden by the greenish pool

Water    

With age
water    
became a friend    
Fluidity    
Moving    
Changing homes    
Changing churches, schools, friends    
Parents gone    
and back again    
And gone    
reappearing to reclaim
A daughter left

Time brought clarity    
Life could be better    
Water could become a friend    
Soothing    
Calming    
Relaxing

Until  
   
That same Daddy    
Once so scary    
Took his teen girl camping on the beach    
Favorite memory
Just the 2: father, daughter    
Walking    
Exploring starfish caverns    
Then, after sunset    
Running from a blazing fire    
Into frigid water    
Then back to the warmth again

Water    
   
Passing years,    
Yet still she liked running in the rain    
With high school friends
In college sometimes still    
Downpours soaked down to the bones
    
Familiar    
Unruly    
Cool    
Water    
   
Cliff jumping into lakes    
Combing beaches    
Always returning soaked    
Skipping rocks rippling with the flowing rivers…    
   
those waters:    
Fun    
Playful    
Daring    
Dangerous    
Dark    
Raucous    
Silent    
Murky    
Clear    
Rippling    
Crashing    
Forever changing    
Always the same  
Water  
Life