Flowing Time

A waterdrop,

I
experience time
as flow along a riverbed,
ordering my experiences
according to my journey downhill.

A quiet beginning,

I float
in a whispering, dark
bank of fog
far above the earth
below.

Companions condense around me,
some before me, some after,
some above, some below.

I feel myself growing,
expanding and gradually notice
the earth looming
closer.

I feel the air rush by
as I gain speed.

I tumble through the chill air,
though feeling no cold.

I notice green pines,
gray-black rocks,
scattered bramble,
brilliant specks of color,
flowers
and sense scattered movements
of a brook beneath.

I know no fear.

I remember
no previous experience.

Without warning,
I splat startled
against the rapidly spreading scenery.

Amnesiacally awakening
I find myself on the verge of a mountain stream.
scratching raggedly across
a rough-faced granite boulder
that borders a rivulet some few feet wide.

My comrades land all around.

Some have been blown to the blazing white snowfields above,
that feed my little stream.

Many land nearby to share a fate similar to mine,
some downstream, crash through
the rustling yellow-green brush on the bank.

I slide into the roiling brook
and merge with the flow
of many like myself.

I feel a steady
downward,
forward
pull.

I slither along jostling others.

We avoid obstructions,
rolling gracefully
along the path
that resists us least.

I can remember no other life.

Pressed together
by the stream banks,
we travel downhill
to a destiny
unknown,
unpondered.

We tumble together
through cracks and crevices,
over broad surfaces
of polished gray-pink granite.

We rub gently the roots
of trees and grass
that tentatively poke their way
into the humus-floored watercourse.

On steeper pitches
we are tossed
into the air
splashing and
bubbling.

Some of us are thrown clear,
and fly sparkling to quench the thirst
of the vegetation sprouting green and fresh
along the borders of our burbling world.

My neighbors shift constantly,
some return to my side;
some drift away
gone forever.

Maturing, I consider events more closely.

Seeing unwarned companions evaporate,
doubt and wonder fill my thoughts.

I twirl and whirl further along,

first indifferent then frightened,

at the prospect of disappearing
like my short-lived
fellow-droplets.

I ask myself hundreds of answerless questions.

I hear rumors of the sea,
a vast volume of drops like myself
heaving and flowing in answer to the moon,
a world quite alien to me.

I ponder;
the future,
evaporation,
the mythical sea.

Passing through cracks,
I convince myself that fate is crack-like.

Resting in calm algae-filled pools,
fate becomes pool-like.

Rubbing against root-filled, dirt stream banks,
I feel compelled to argue for a rooty, muddy eternity.

Endlessly the changing stream bed charges by.

I
am scuffed,
battered by craggy stones,
meeting the onslaught,

I
equalize by tearing
sand
from the self-assured,
torturing mountain.

A swoop of glassy obsidian roundness,

an impact;

and I find myself sailing
through Spring's warm air.

Feeling light golden warmth envelop me,

I sense my impending evaporation
and anxiously dream of the cool stream bed
and the haven it offers.

Surprisingly,
I feel myself rising,
leaving the worn watercourse.

I shoot high in the air,
looking upon all that is below me
and above me and around me.

A flash of clarity.

I am vaporized,
returning to the undifferentiated mist
only to condense and fall in a never-ending cycle;

Each plop of landing a fresh birth,
to be followed by a wholly new life
dependent upon a chance of landing,
the downhill slope shaping a limited future until,

again,

I evaporate and return
to the formless, limitless expanse
above.