The joke in Nebraska is that we have lots of water. It’s just all underground. There we go boasting about our Oglalla Aquifer again like we own the place and getting the bar to buy us a round and they toast our inheritance and we all sing, “Piano Man,” arm in arm slowly swaying.
Arm in arm slowly swaying the act of tired celebration, cooperative supporting drunk bodies in joy. The last call is coming, we can sense it unspoken, the streets are all empty so we’ll sing louder to boot. *before the boot*
There are five rivers depending, depending on the landscape, the shallow moving of sandbars the tall grass and felled trees. Or maybe better yet, not five rivers, just five currents divided widely pulled apart as individual strands. Silver. Silver-plated. Silver Platted shallow and bending and we love a good rain that unites all five drop by drop.
I know a woman who knows rivers and I mean, she really knows them. She gets called out in earth movers to measure and dig. She knows water and measure and the power of current, she knows the river is the victor it’s just a matter of time. The river is the victor, it’s movement will push as it pleases, downstream it is useless to think that it won’t. So you might build a levy, a damn mixing concrete and as long as you check it, the river may be quelled. But rivers are victors and confluence is of nature and man can do his damndest to damn what he wants, but when the money and workers, those damn checkers with paychecks? Once the contract is over, the damndest man best beware. The pushing is and corrosion against man’s greatest efforts will buckle and break down and the river will win.
So say there are rivers within this one hero. She’s a mother, a lover, an artist, a dream and say this one hero one day sees all the water below her bone’s surface and starts to reflect. The power of each river one to another getting closer, if still closer to connecting, then one day they will
Come together and keep flowing downstream for the hero in her boat ever moving,
Confluence at last.
And then welcome her cheering, the bar open, the rounds pouring, arm in arm the crowd swaying like do it in film. Toasting her voyage, confluence, connection, the silverest treasure with the song they all sing.