water and words

it's a week of changing weather. there is rain, then sun, then rain, then sun. if the temperatures would be a bit higher, this would be a real-life-greenhouse. yesterday, i tried to take a rain-flower picture, and out came the one above.

today i went to the spa again... and walked there in the rain. but while drifing in the pool, the sun came out. and i thought of water. and words. i hadn't really realized this when putting the shortcuts/detours issue together, but there is a lot of water included in its pages: there's the lake in the library story, the ocean in the washed away poem, there's butler creek, and the rain that falls in the walking home story.

now i just looked through the issue, and there is even more water. actually, there is a water line in almost every page. here a collage of it:

Shortcuts to water

There was a glacier
and a sailboat,
the Pacific Ocean,

a place you’ve seen before but not
with the light bouncing off the water
in exactly that way

The ocean washes against the old
beach fort that has shrunk
beside the backdrop of my age.

My memory fickle, like black ice.

you were the one who found the lake we visited,
you were the one who went out early that morning

You
In from the rain
We
With a committee for friends

a raft floated by your kitchen sink

you watch, you water, you wait,
until the skinny blades of green
break through their earthy sleep
and stretch toward sky.

*

Butler Creek, thick with thaw and purpose
rages through the foothills of the White Mountains
like a boy's fast dreams.
The water shines black in the pink gloaming.

The father follows her and quickly returns
with two cold and sweating bottles of water.
He hands one to his daughter
and pours the other over her head.
The shock of cold has her gasping for a few seconds,
but then she beams with relief.

The water glittering in the puddles on the tracks
in two identically-shaped, different-colored streaks of light;
one blue and one golden

*

hot waters health and safety,
offers instead are of warmed milk,
please sip always

**

which makes it ... time for coffee.

but before that, a bit more of the yellow rain flower, here, on the verge.

~