Midweek Motif ~ Watershed Moments

             

The Somass Estuary, Port Alberni, BC

photo by Dennis See

Heart of Vancouver Island

"Every life has a watershed moment,
an instant when you recognize you are about to  make a choice
that will define everything else you will ever do.
I'm not sure we can recognize those moments
until they've passed us."

― Mira Grant, Feed

"As costly as it was in the lives of our men and women in uniform, 

in military assets, and in esteem and pride, 

Pearl Harbor was a watershed moment for America.
(Joe Baca)

Watershed moments are commonly understood as a moment in time, after which nothing is ever the same. The dictionary definition is, literally, the place in a river, where the water is split into two distinct paths that will not intersect again. This gives us two options.

Your challenge: 

Describe a watershed moment in your life, 

or, 

describe a watershed in an actual river.

WATERSHED

From this high place all things flow,

Land of divided streams, of water spilled

Eastward, westward, without memento...

Land where the morning mist is furled

Like smoke above the ridgepole of the world.

The sunset hawk now rides

The tall might up the climbing deep of air.

Beneath him swings the rooftree that divides

The east and west. His gold eyes scan

The crumpled shade on gorge and crest

And streams that creep and disappear, appear,

Past fingered ridges and their shrivelling span

Under the broken eaves men take their rest.

from the Collected Works of Robert Penn Warren,
an excerpt from his long poem Audubon: A Vision.

You can read the entirety of this poem here.

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Language Of Water

Water calls out the names of the dead and the living
Tells stories about our past

Moves through our dreams in great currents of desire
Pulls the dialect of our days strung together in steady vowels

Water is the gathering place and the scattering
The vessel and the drink

It wraps the planet in a mantle of blue
And spins her out into the universe longing

For connection with each stone she passes
She empties words of mourning and words of bliss

Carries undone houses in floods, so spirits live on through generations
Swimming in her body

Every flood plain is marked by the shape of her face
Every suicide that is called home through her portal

Dreams of light and movement and wanders
Vast plains of blue speaking in tongues of ocean, or river, lake or pond

To understand her speech you listen to fish, heron, or eel
You watch bird, turtle, fox, or bear bend down to drink from her mouth

You swim the long channels of her mind
And rise back up dripping with news from her underworld

Water calls out all our names, offers us second chances to heal
Reminds us to look at what we cannot now see,

And to listen for what we cannot now hear.

– Devreaux Baker, 2009
Poem inspired by the vision of  Watershed Poetry Mendocino

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Or, a watershed moment in one's life: in this case the moment when a doctor wrote a four-letter diagnosis on a piece of paper, that spelled the fate of Mark Doty's lover, Wally.

Atlantis

BY MARK DOTY

1. FAITH

“I’ve been having these

awful dreams, each a little different,

though the core’s the same—

we’re walking in a field,

Wally and Arden and I, a stretch of grass

with a highway running beside it,

or a path in the woods that opens

onto a road. Everything’s fine,

then the dog sprints ahead of us,

excited; we’re calling but

he’s racing down a scent and doesn’t hear us,

and that’s when he goes

onto the highway. I don’t want to describe it.

Sometimes it’s brutal and over,

and others he’s struck and takes off

so we don’t know where he is

or how bad. This wakes me

every night now, and I stay awake;

I’m afraid if I sleep I’ll go back

into the dream. It’s been six months,

almost exactly, since the doctor wrote

not even a real word

but an acronym, a vacant

four-letter cipher

that draws meanings into itself,

reconstitutes the world.

We tried to say it was just

a word; we tried to admit

it had power and thus to nullify it

by means of our acknowledgement.

I know the current wisdom:

bright hope, the power of wishing you’re well.

He’s just so tired, though nothing

shows in any tests, Nothing,

the doctor says, detectable;

the doctor doesn’t hear what I do,

that trickling, steadily rising nothing

that makes him sleep all day,

vanish into fever’s tranced afternoons,

and I swear sometimes

when I put my head to his chest

I can hear the virus humming

like a refrigerator.

Which is what makes me think

you can take your positive attitude

and go straight to hell.

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You can read the entirety of the poem here, if you wish.

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Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below and visit others in the spirit of the community.

       (Next week Sumana's Midweek Motif will be ~ Boredom   )