Washout

© 2011 James N. Burke

The dam was an intolerable insult.

The bridges pinched my flow, the diversions to the crops reduced it, the penstocks to the mills turned it to their vile work.  The dam? Attempting to tame... me? Yet I bided through the decades.

My whole watershed felt the storm’s potential in the light airs.  I urged the groundwater up in anticipation. Together, we swelled, poured over banks, tore at roadways, pushed at foundations, over-topped and removed the dam.

Destroying the bridges, buildings and other works of man was overexuberance, granted, but they never should have built that dam.