Listening to the babbling brook whispering
Hearing blurred words as a tone of voice
Bubbling sounds like fingers drum soothing rhythms
Caressing the stones with flowing wet hands.
The stream runs cold and clear and clean
Tumbling and sliding downhill speaking phrases
Murmuring in an ancient mood language
Mingling surface and substrate image shapes.
A toy canoe released into this stream
Would never make it to the ocean now
Traveling this water destined to add to a reservoir
Supplying the millions living in the distant city.
In the highlands in a place of natural beauty
As the current pushes down the slope
A standing wave shaped by the bottom contours
Seems to pause as if to ask what is a question of time.
The course of the waterway being eroded
Tells a story beginning thousands of years ago
When the last Ice Age retreated leaving barren rock
Giving time for plants and animals to inhabit this place.
Surviving until all the changes unfolding today
With the onset of escalating climate change
With the proliferation of invasive species
Distributed everywhere by human intervention.
Imagining what might be here in thousands of years
Depends so much on what this generation does
To overturn the system that created this crisis
To begin doing what benefits the earth and all of us.
