In spate

Midnight. Climbing into bed, cool breezes flowing in one window and out the other, listening to the night,  and suddenly--not the yowl of cats or motorbikes, but a gushing sound as of a river in spate. Probably just the sound of a distant wind. Wait! Had some pipe burst in my cellar and was water pouring into that space?  Or my dishwasher? Had its connections let go?  Hurriedly, I pulled on my shorts and ran down downstairs. Kitchen fine; cellar dry. Then what? I went out into the breezy coolness.

There, a few dozen yards down the road, was a truck, back open, dome light on, with some hard-hatted guy checking his phone; in front of him a hydrant spouting a tube of water as thick as my torso, on and on, seemingly inexhaustible, the water geysering horizontally, onto the road as a swirling sheet, then down the hill in a thick, hurrying stream.

Oh, water. How much of you there was last night and how powerful. In a few seconds as much as I use in a day was hurled away. I've been to the Quabbin, so I know where you came from. Indeed, I used to as a boy walk along the aqueduct that carries you here (I even remember peering down the darkness of the vent holes), but in the cool of midnight, as I stood shirtless in the breezes purling like a stream over and around me, you seemed as miraculous as the rock Moses smote (and lost admission to the Holy Land in consequence) from which leapt forth what quenched the thirst of the Chosen (and their flocks).

I've a new hose nozzle for gently watering my garden. A array of tiny streams in formation arch toward the tomatoes, arc upon arc, like marching soldiers on parade, which I sometimes force to stop and countermarch as I waggle the hose. At times, the ranks collide and mingle as under the influence of competing bands a la Ives. I still my hand not from mercy but a desire to see the beauty of the barrage in the light of the setting sun. Then disruption again. Water, what you let us do to you.

The time lapse wave photos of my friend Rodo suggest in their layered indeterminateness, your readiness for repetition, each iteration as fresh and wholehearted as each last one back to the beginning. I recognize, water, your crowd-of-faces multiplicity spread across the image as by a knife.

'We have to let it run for 20 minutes just to check,' said the BSWC worker to the half-naked guy who'd come out to see what the river noise was. A few minutes later, and they were gone, and you, my mighty Midgard serpent, were safely confined to be drawn off in finger-thick units for showers and coffee.