AT THE SPRUCE RUN RESERVOIR IN THE HIGH-POURIN' RAIN

47. AT THE SPRUCE RUN RESERVOIR IN THE HIGH-POURIN' RAIN

Under every tree I sit there's some biblical phrase or even a curse somehow written in the bark above my head - and I go to a'wonderin' where any of it all came from - "whose hand helt [sic] the knife that did all this strife" and left all these marks in the trees - and as I sit listening to the pouring rain come pouring down I'm protected by the cover of these tall fir trees and you and me you and I we go about looking for forty-year-old initials that may be in the trees - ours to be exact - yet in the cold rain we find nothing but watery paths and places where others have sat and then instead we just start to talking about the old days and what it was like back then when - it was - we thought the time we carved the rhyme or whatever it was in the old tree bark - but the times that may be changing NOW are not the times what were changing then so instead we recognize anew that always everything is change and nothing static stays so any move to make proclamation about a such as that is stupid and foolish and useless and all but it's all been done nonetheless and what we now see as we look out ahead is some vast reservoir of water and some Spruce Run playground for the dead and dying and somedays it's like dried up all and others it's all flooded out and the lifeguard stands are empty today in the rain and the dried lands are everywhere and the water has way receded but the treeline still it stands like forevermore and silence broods and the deepening dark woodlands graze themselves in some tired wet and gray afternoon and no solace is found except the three little fishing tents we see at the water's edge a'farther down by the stone-hut quarry sheds and some people inside each tent huddled for the cold cold rain and all we really see from each - the orange tent and the others too - are some fishing poles a'sticking out and the cars up top where they may have parked by the Rangers' lot but even that we really don't know except they're fishing a lot in the old pouring rain and nothing's much biting and the water is quiet and we sit beneath the evergreen ceiling of branches and sky and wonder what all it was that brought us to this.