The River's Source

Words fall out
Like water over a cliff
Sometimes they trickle over the edge
Like a light drizzle
Cold
And early in Spring
Sometimes they fall fast
And loud
Like the faucet in your tub
On full blast
Hot
And steamy

Who knows for sure
Why it is one
Or the other
A long snowy winter
Heavy Spring rains
Sandbagging upstream
A long dry spell
Damming
Natural or otherwise

Kids are kind of like sandbags
Piles and piles of sandbags
Kids are like two months of sun
Ninety four degree sun
Heat index well over one hundred
Kids are like a really big Chinese style hydroelectric dam
All shiny, new, and effective
Kids are all of this and more
Sometimes on the same day

The truth is that these days
The words come faster and looser
And louder
Than I would like
More often
Than they probably should
The sandbags
Droughts
And dams
Take some blame
More than they should
Because sometimes
When the water is roaring over the falls
I forget
That I control the headwaters