About Water

I've been reading Robert Fulghum's "What on Earth Have I Done?" You might recognize his name from "All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten" and my favorite "It was on Fire When I Lay Down on It" Mr. Fulghum can make you bust a gut laughing (which is why my favorite is "It Was on Fire When I Lay Down on It") and he can really make you think. And this most recent book (at least the most recent that I am reading) is really making me think.

The following poem is chapter 37.

Are you reading these words
Because you've been looking
For something?
Something to hold onto?
A talisman for this day?
Reading this, like walking
Up a dry streambed in September?
Looking for something for your pocket;
A keepsake for taking home;
Kindling to start the fire of memory;
Looking for whatever the flash floods
Of August have picked up, polished,
Washed down and offer you now:
Smooth stones, sanded sticks,
Feathers, bones, seeds,
And unspeakable sounds
That break the logjam of being.
Are you walking up the dry bed
Of this poem looking
For something like that?
To have, to hold, to keep?

Stop.
Go Back.
Wait until the big storm comes in you.
Be here when the flood flashes through.
Stand in the water as deep as you dare.
If what the water does is lost on you,
Then you are truly lost.
Wait.
Stand until you know
What water does.
Hold onto that.
Finder's keeper's.


So what do you think? What does this poem say to you?