Let it Rain, Let it Pour

To say it was like cats and dogs would be the understatement of the century.

No, not this rain. Not this afternoon.

Something more like Niagara Falls evaporating into clouds then traveling 1,200 miles south, getting tied up over the Black Mountains of North Carolina, ripping open like canvas under pressure, leaking, each drop like a grain of rice, impossible to count, rolling over skin, chasing down roads, falling, down, onto the South Toe River Valley.

When I try to drive, the gravel loop road I live on snakes out in brown creeks before my tires, which hardly respond to steering. There is a rut for each tire and then some, dragging the vehicle downhill as water tends to travel, which thankfully happens to be the direction I need to travel as well.

Everything amphibious is in revolt, waterways overflow, clever rock hiding places are upturned, bullfrogs leap mightily across the blurry road flashing their white bellies along the way. Worms and snakes drown, spring peepers huddle out of sight but within earshot in new corners of fields where water creeps from creek beds to higher ground, the threat of flooding lapping at the edge of a neighbor’s fence.

I scout the South Toe River from the highest, sturdiest cement bridge nearby (the same one our river soared four feet over the top of during floods two hurricane season’s ago). It runs fast, at least eighteen miles per hour I guess, brown and frothy like melted chocolate, carrying large branches and shifting invisible sands below the surface.

The earth is moving underneath my feet, shifting lifetimes of soil and nutriment downstream, rushing onward into furious possibility. Who ever said change is slow in coming?