Yesterday I stopped to rest beside Deer Creek at a place that looks mirror-smooth and quiet when viewed from several hundred feet downstream. Up close, I see leaves afloat on the surface like little boats, bobbling along at a spanking pace. This calm place is as full of energetic movement as the shallow, splashy, over-the-rocks place. Only the expression of its force varies.
When I was a small child I spent hours and hours playing beside and in a branch of Cross Kill Creek where it ran though the meadow beside our house. I created channels and dams, observed the flow, put little floating things-- sticks and leaves-- on the surface and paced them on their downstream journey until they sank or got stuck or my short legs couldn't keep up as I ran along the bank. For as long as I've had conscious thought I've been fascinated by water and its flow.
Water moves in subtle but consistent patterns. I suppose the formalized study is called fluid dynamics, which I didn't know about when I was choosing a course of formalized study. Yet overt, non-quantified, close observation has both physical world lessons and metaphorical lessons. I am a poet, I speak metaphor.
Watch a swan create a small wake on a calm lake and know it's paddling like mad underneath.
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