Endlessly on to the Sea
Posted: Tuesday, February 07, 2012
by Jack H. Schick
He sat on the broad, decaying beech stump, his mind almost blank. The steady patter of the late Autumn rain on his plastic hood and brim of his cap, the occasional tickling, cool splash on his cheek and bare hands twitched him from reverie bringing him almost into this world, but the dreamy, remote isolation persisted. Distracted, he watched the drops hit his knees and splatter. The water pooled and accumulated in the wrinkles of his rain pants then ran off in periodic surges, falling onto the wet, matted leaves that carpeted the forest floor by his feet. A brief breeze rippled through the trees jostling the naked branches which sent plummeting down a barrage of oversized drops that pelted him and rang out with energy as they bounced off his jacket and hood.
He looked up into the finger like branches. The cold raindrops hit his face. He managed a halting smile as he felt and tasted the water that had once been by his feet, and then had run down, through the leaves to the stream, then down through the valley to the river and onto across the landscape, past the towns to the sea. It was back again, as it ever was, in the sky again, and falling; onto the leaves again, and endlessly on to the sea.
His phone rang. He pulled it from his pocket. A cold tingle surged through him when he saw the doctor’s name on the screen. “Hello… Yes… I was afraid of that. Now what?...Surgery isn’t an option?... All right, we’ll start Thursday, then. I don’t look forward to going through that again, but I guess there is no option.”
The stream always looked the same, in a general way. But, nothing of course was the same for very long, always meandering, changing in subtle ways. The slippery place, where he’d fallen and slid down and into the water, soaking his new shoes when he was just a little boy, was gone. He wasn’t even sure exactly where it was. The stream bank was different. The tree he’d clung to crawling up the slippery slope was gone, its roots eroded it fell into the water and washed away, down to the road and broke against the culvert many years ago. He remembered it there, and remembered feeling sad that it was gone. But, the stream was still there with new trees.
He stood, his boots slowly sinking into the mud, as the stream, ever swelling, ever rushing off to somewhere else, sped by. It rippled and swirled over the rocks that had always been there, but were never the same, always rolling, shifting themselves, inching along on their journey to smoothness and sand. The water slowly ate at them, slowly, persistently dissolved them and carried them on to the sea.
He walked back to the car, took off his rain gear and tossed it in the trunk. The windows were fogged. He turned on the engine and turned the defroster on high. He took out his phone and called home. “Hi, it’s me… It’s not good news…I don’t know… No, they can’t cut it out this time. I’m just so tired. I start treatments again Thursday…Calm down, there is nothing we can do and this doesn’t help…Okay, I’ll be home in a little while. I’m over at Grandpop's old farm…Just walking around…Okay…Love you too.”
He pulled into the parking area at the side of the old road and walked down the muddy trail into the laurel patch. The stream cut a deep, steep gully through the soft sandy soil. He stood on the wooden foot bridge, rebuilt since he’d last been there, and stared down at the water rushing by below. The energy, the sound, the confined turmoil of the rain swollen current of tumbling water mesmerized him. As he leaned on his elbows on the railing, his chin resting on his fists, his mind drifted away to a different place, to a different time. He wandered there a while.
He startled from his dreams when the rushing water undercut a bank and a section of the gully side broke loose and crumbled into the flow, melted before his eyes and vanished, washed away and gone on its journey to the river and on to the sea. He couldn’t help but draw the parallel. “The best laid plans,” the “house built upon sand,” all were under cut, all were washed away by the relentless flow, the mindless, soulless flow of the water, the ever moving water. The words of an old song came to his mind. He sang it to himself as he walked back up the trail toward his car. “There is water at the bottom of the ocean. Hold the water, carry the water. Same as it ever was. Same as it ever was.”
*
“No, I don’t need anything,” he said. “Well, I guess I could use an end to all of this…I’m sorry! I’m sorry. Don’t cry.”
He was tired and hurting. He watched out the window at the icicles hanging from the eaves. The depths of winter had never depressed him before, yet now his energy was gone. It felt cold and final. The bright sunlight cheered him a little, but he never could be satisfied now. He watched the biggest icicle shining. Drips of water appeared at its tip and fell. One after the other they formed swelled, dripped with monotonous regularity. The solid slowly dissolving in the sun. A puddle formed on the frozen ground beneath it, grew bigger and bigger until it flowed over the edged of the depression. A rivulet trickled down across the lawn to the driveway. It continued, running along the curb, across the asphalt and down, through the grating into the culvert. It traveled, ever flowing, ever downward, through the pipe to the stream where it poured down over the rocks, slowly dissolving them, slowly moving them, then persistently, relentlessly, endlessly continued on to the sea.
{assignment: extended metaphor/hydrolic cycle}
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Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)You are growing all the time and I commend you for this effort. Here's to you and your skills. Lots of heart and soul.Thanks- not my best, but a stab at it.
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